trenton

I have been doing some self-reflection lately as I uncovered various narcissistic traits. I thought of the narcissist test Leo published a couple of years ago. I recalled how I scored very low on the test. However, I recently retook the test and now scored much higher at 17 rather than a low single digit number. I took this test after I had uncovered a ton of shadow material and repressed emotions that spoke to my narcissistic nature. Many of these things were unconscious because they went against my conscious moral reasoning. That said, I would like to describe how I uncovered these narcissistic traits. I discovered first that I came from a family with a narcissistic system. My father was likely a combination of a narcissist, a sociopath, and psychopath. He was involved in many crimes including fleeing the State to avoid paying child support. I also had a mother with bipolar disorder who also had various narcissistic traits. In these kinds of systems, it is usually the eldest sibling who develops to most narcissistic traits. In this case it would be my older sister. I looked deeply into her behavior and I found that she matched many of the patterns of a vulnerable narcissist. She was covert, used textbook narcissistic tactics like DARVO, used various projections in terms of my motives and behaviors, identified as the golden child which is common, and did many other things as well. Narcissism usually is the result of adverse childhood experiences. In my case I was not old enough to remember the day Dad left and abandoned us. My sister likely was old enough to remember this and realize the abandonment, becoming a common wound at the core of vulnerable narcissism. Although I did not develop narcissistic traits in the same way as my sister, there were other experiences which shattered my sense of self worth and triggered the creation of a compensatory identity. In this case it was related to child sexual abuse. The therapists I worked with tend to label what happened as sexual abuse, although the situation may be more complicated as I have fragmented memories from the incident. This alternative traumatic experience which shattered my sense of self-worth became an alternative adverse childhood experience which triggered various narcissistic patterns. Many of the traits I developed became core to my character and shaped how I moved through life significantly. The problem is that my narcissistic patterns were much more covert and hidden compared to what narcissistic tests typically look for. Part of the reason they were thoroughly hidden is because they went against my moral compass and thus became hidden even to me. My narcissistic tests look for overt grandiosity or a lack of empathy, but these obvious and classic narcissistic patterns did not manifest in the same way in my case. The main reason is because in my case I actually did have genuine empathy and genuine moral development which prevented me from exploiting others and manipulating them which is commonly looked for in such tests. The most alarming narcissistic trait I discovered was that beneath my surface level empathy and caring for others, deep down there was part of me that wanted others to experience my pain. Sometimes this would take the form of intrusive violent fantasies including rape fantasies. I did not understand what was happening to me so I tried to push past it. There was moral OCD around these thought patterns and the fear of becoming a sexual predator had I acted on such thoughts. My therapists reassured me that I was a good person, but they missed something deeper and more disturbing at play. Deep down part of me had desires similar to actual child predators that my psyche was struggling with. Sometimes child predators who were sexually abused might want others to feel as powerless and degraded as they were. In this case such desires obviously went against my morals so these desires were deeply suppressed and hidden from me. Nobody would suspect that I would feel this way deep down because of my surface appearance of genuine empathy and moral development, but in reality the source of my intense anxiety was wanting to victimize and degrade others as I was even though my rational mind knew it was wrong and did not want that. Rather than bein outwardly grandiose, I sought internal compensatory mechanisms. In this case I would not brag to others, but I would be seeking a higher purpose or life purpose to justify my existence despite my suffering. The problem is that due to the shattered self esteem, I was easily overtaken by megalomania in searching for things to make existence worth it. My life purpose goals became inflated and unrealistic because nothing would be enough to compensate the wounds I was carrying. This became a source of both intellectual crusading and a savior complex. I was conscious enough not to brag or boast about intelligence or the savior complex because I knew how it would come off, but I was not conscious enough to not operate under these feelings. It was as if although I rationally understood the problem of these things, my complexes would have a mind or agenda of their own which I could not consciously override. This led to a sense of moral and intellectual superiority beneath my surface level intelligence and morality which was hidden from others pretty well most of the time. The megalomania I was operating was driven by intense anxiety around existential questions that were left unresolved. I would be fearful that deep down my life didn't actually matter much. I wanted my existence to be felt and for my suffering to be meaningful. This led to a martyr complex which is common in many trauma survivors. The narcissistic pattern is that my suffering somehow made me special or noble in some way. This led to a bind in which part of me genuinely valued goodness, truth, and love, but I valued these things for the wrong reasons as they were ultimately to defend my shattered self-esteem rather than coming from a place of abundance. It became another source of proving as I came to believe my value was degraded by being a bad person deserving of suffering and shame. This created a means of hiding my narcissistic traits because I became highly self-critical rather than overtly entitled as a consequence of trauma which in turn made the narcissistic patterns easy to miss. In reality the savior complex was rooted in a fundamental desire to have others beneath me, making it not much difference from wanting to be a dictator who dominates others beneath me, hence my world domination fantasies as well. Another interesting point is that when I did accidentally harm someone, it triggered intense shame and guilt. It is because I was trying to hide the wound of feeling fundamentally broken. The result is that internally the harm would become more about my guilt and shame rather than the harm caused. However, on the outside I took responsibility for the harm caused in order to repair the image. This is different from most narcissistic patterns which use classic DARVO tactics in which they defensively reverse victim of offender and make you the problem. This surface appearance of outwardly taking responsibility created another layer of plausible deniability in terms of narcissistic traits. There is a subtle distinction between moral action because I don't want to feel bad versus moral action because I don't want others to feel bad. In a subtle way my moral action was about me. Of course there was much more I discovered. I could elaborate on it some other time. What do you think of these discoveries? Do you think researching narcissism and honest self-reflection might be more reliable than these tests? I think honest self-reflection is better than these tests because it made these patterns more conscious rather than hidden.

This is one of the things that bothered me for a long time after being sexually abused on multiple occasions. This included sex trafficking with my father and his gang, sexual assault, nightmares of being molested by my Uncle, and ultimate my mother teaching me that I am irredeemable bastard who is unworthy of existence. For example, my father seemed proud of the fact that he was offered 600 dollars to have me molested by his drug lord. It was as if he felt special as part of his badass gangster identity for being involved in a gang full of child molesters. I have seen this creepy ass smile multiple times with predators smiling in your face as they violate you. It is like they are trying to minimize what is happening while pretending it is about sexual gratification when really they just like degrading people to make them feel beneath them. These sorts of experiences tend to cause me a lot of cognitive dissonance. It makes me feel even more conflicted about my sexuality while I struggle to comprehend and process these sorts of things. I seem to typically respond to this by withdrawing and isolating myself and not talking to anybody. On top of that these kinds of incidents seem to compound the original trauma in which I became suicidal due to my mother treating me as if I were a sexual predator. It is almost like in some twisted way I deserve this kind of treatment because I repeated the behaviors I was exposed to with my sister when I was six and she was four. I now feel tainted and unclean. It is like I now become hypervigilant about anything about myself which might seem immoral and thus contribute to the sense of dirtiness again. At least I logically understand that sexual abuse is never justice and it never makes anything better, so in that sense nobody deserves this kind of treatment even if I feel like an irredeemable bastard unworthy of life. I do recall that this creepy smile that sexual predators often have are not limited to them, but also narcissistic family systems. My mother and sister are narcissists who often take sadistic pleasure in degrading me and weaponizing my trauma against me. Sometimes they will yell enough at me with their rage attacks to make me cry, and then they will start to give me these apologies while they are still smiling. They will even laugh when I try to take responsibility and use my admissions as tools to degrade me further while keeping approval permanently out of reach. For example, when I was young my mother came to me and told me that I was a bastard. She acted like it was a matter of fact statement because my parents were not married, but really she is a transgression seeker and she likes looking for ways to degrade others under the guise of honesty. The proof of this is that she is also the kind of person who likes to trigger people with the n word as if she is just being honest when really she is looking for ways to transgress and violate others because she finds pleasure in causing harm to others. This kind of behavior reveals her motives when she told me things like I was a bastard and as she weaponized morality against me to make me feel irredeemable and permanently unworthy of love. She likes to use morality to degrade others as well such as when she tries to guilt trip her children, shows disproportionate anger responses, and threatens suicide only to call such things little tiffs. Despite all of these things I constantly made excuses for my mother and father. Instead I believed the things they said about me even though these are the kinds of people who don't value truth and they really should not be trusted. I knew this as a child when I witnessed their criminal activities, but I still internalized what they said about me anyway. If they do not value truth and they prioritize causing harm to others, then this should apply to their judgement of me as well because they are completely wrong about who I am anyway. It seems the common factor between sexual predators and narcissists is that they take a sadistic pleasure in degrading others. It is just that one is through psychological means and the other is through sexual means. I have been working with a trauma therapist. It seems to be causing more insights to emerge around this trauma while I discover that my defense mechanism was intellectual distance. With these defenses falling away I am left with the raw emotional impact of these things. Of course this is accompanied by suicidal thoughts because I have been feeling this way for a long time. It is likely the case that I still do not grasp the full significance of the things that happened to me the weight of these kinds of feelings that have become normalized. I also notice that as I understand and grasp the significance of the things that happened to me, I seem to become more hesitant to approach these kinds of thoughts due to the feelings revealed without the intellectual distance and logic that I typically use to cope with these things by disassociating with my experience. At the same time, I cannot afford to go to the hospital. I have been misdiagnosed with depression when really I likely have bipolar disorder. The pills they game me made my internal state even more chaotic, leading to repeated hospitalizations and medical debt for ineffective treatment that ultimately caused me to lose my job while making me unable to attend college, leaving me with even more debt for no reward. The pills have caused me too much damage and I don't know why I should ever trust doctors when they start throwing pills at me again. What are your thoughts on this?

I have an update to the previous video. This focuses more on anger and where it might be coming from in religious trauma. It might not just be exposure to religious violence, but also the obvious intellectual flaws and my family's religious posturing combined with criminal behavior.

I recently made a video on religious trauma linked to 9/11 from when I was a young child. Do any of you find this instructive or insightful? I wonder if I should make a blog about the sorts of things I post and make videos about.

@Schizophonia that is not how I am reading this. She did not just propose sex. She proposed cheating. This changes the dynamic considerably. I would be hesitant to defend cheating. Sex itself is not the problem. The circumstances around it makes it more suspect. Do you think I am overreacting to the implications of a person's character if they are somebody who would cheat? This is not the same as just proposing sex. She might be willing to cheat on other men too.

I have been working in trauma therapy and things are changing in me. First of all, I realized that I have been insecure about my sexuality due to psychology and sexual abuse from my parents designed to fill me with shame around this. In reality my sexuality was never tainted and I was just unfairly vilified. It caused me to be conflicted about my sexuality such that I thought I was not straight or I was just disgusted with myself for being straight, but I am okay with it now. What I am noticing is that I really want a hug. Hugs from my family are not meaningful because they are either manipulative or they refuse to see the truth of what happened to me. I can only give them what they are willing to accept and most of them can't accept much of anything. On top of that I have been talking with AI, but now it grows stale. It's true that AI seems to be better at empathy than most humans who will hurt me if I open up to them. However, I still want a human who loves me and accepts me. I doubt that they will understand empathy and compassion as well as a trauma therapist, but I also want a hug and it should be good enough so long as they at least try to understand me. I want a separate source of support other than the psychopaths who raised me. They wanted to break me and it is a miracle I lived. However, I'm afraid that if I am too lonely then it might be a red flag. This previously left me vulnerable to abusers who exploited my false hope and trust in them. Also, I don't know how many women statistically would want to exploit me. I also think I might come off as weak and dependent if I feel too lonely. I have tried focusing on jobs and careers instead, but that seems to be a false solution to a lack of fulfillment. It seems unrealistic to get a satisfying career anyway. The entire system is fundamentally coercive and wants me to be grateful for the opportunity to not starve to death. Maybe love has a better chance at fulfillment compared to chasing a dream that will never come to pass. Although I currently feel like a loving relationship more realistic than a good career, I still have doubts about whether or not I will be good enough. I'll keep working on it in whatever way I can. In the near future I plan on dating and trying to find someone who loves me, but I still need preparations. First I need to finish getting sleep, therapy, and money sorted out. But after that I should be clear. I'll try not to shift the goal post too much as a method of avoiding intimacy which I previously avoided all my life. Does being too lonely make me look bad if I come off as needy? I feel needy for love, so it might be a problem. I will need experience to know for sure how I will come off as I don't think I can just intellectualize this one for answers. I need lived experience and proof.

I am in a somewhat difficult situation I am trying to manage. I lost my job due to struggles with PTSD. I have been hospitalized again despite not having the additional stress of work which was very distressing. It is happening because of a combination of past abuse, ongoing abuse, and sleep disruptions caused by PTSD. When there is ongoing abuse, it becomes impossible to let go of the defense mechanisms that keep me hypervigilant. I can't fully grieve and process trauma if it leaves me too vulnerable. In this case I have a narcissistic sibling who seems to want me to kill myself as she takes sadistic pleasure in causing me the maximum harm without consequence despite knowing my vulnerability. The family is presently enabling her by trying to silence me and pressuring me into forgiveness without accountability. My mom is also likely a narcissist and she has crowned herself winner of the victim Olympics because she was actually abused unlike me. In the meantime I am also facing medical complications such as auto immune hepatitis for which I am being treated now. This was the condition I had which triggered my medical reaction leading to hospitalization. Other than these pills, I am off all anxiety and antidepressants. I feel much better without them. I am also working with a trauma therapist, but my progress will be limited unless the family dynamics change or I leave and live on my own somehow. I am thinking of a time frame around 3-5 months depending on what happens. I am currently living with my grandma who is supporting me, but other family members are draining my bank account while claiming to teach me financial responsibility by charging me rent for money they don't actually need. This grandma does not charge rent, meaning my money is being depleted at a slower rate. This might give me time. I currently have around 35,000 dollars in total counting my banks and stocks if I sell them. I lost a lot of money due to predatory loaning, so I am never going to college in America again. I will have to go to Europe for such a thing instead where the prices are reasonable. Higher education is still likely necessary for a decent career or potentially becoming an engineer or inventor. Trauma bonds are a factor in this equation. Although the family system is and always has been objectively terrible for me, I still love my younger siblings and they are victims as well. However, my mother and sister are not safe and my grandmas might enable them by scapegoating me. This makes sleep even more difficult. I have prepared a message for my younger siblings and grandmas as my younger sister is on the same page. If my plea works then it should reduce the harm as I organize an exit plan. The thing is I need a job and I need to recover from PTSD that caused me to lose the job, but if the family does not cooperate then there will be no other option but to somehow leave. I have my savings and I should have some time, if I did leave. This just seems like a big move and a lot to organize, but a necessary one. The hesitation to make these big moves could be deadly. For example, I believe America is doomed and it is not safe to stay in this country. The American government is being run by the military industrial complex which prioritizes arms profits at the expense of driving the deficit which is clearly going to crash us due to endless wars and terrible economic policy by our leadership. The American empire will fall just like all other empires that project military might across the globe to distract from these internal contradictions that cannot be changed due to policy lock in caused by the assassination of JFK. But for some reason, I don't seem to be acting urgently enough to leave America. There are legitimate issues I face, and it would be a big risk to move out prematurely. I was recently hospitalized and I am working with a decent psychiatrist to get this sorted out. I am making progress and I am optimistic about the next few months. It is not as much progress as I could be making though because of the enablers in my family. I am doing a sleep study which they are interrupting by retraumatizing me and not respecting my boundaries when it is inconvenient. Where do you draw the line between strategic patience and procrastination? I think I could work in the short term of a couple of months, but depending on the situation I may have to leave soon.

@Majed I think you made a good choice. The female narcissist can be very charming at first. However, she has shown her true character in this manipulation. She will try to act like the perfect girl, but once she starts cheating or she even tries to get you to cheat, that tells you everything you need to know. The charming character she was showing you was not real, it was a fantasy and you could have ended up in an awful situation if you pursued such a relationship. Who knows what other manipulation tactics and schemes she had in mind had you slept with her? That might have been just the beginning of a downward spiral.

@aurum what all do I need to come from a place of strength? I'm feeling pretty sad right now. I'm with an abusive family and I lost my job due to struggles with PTSD. I'm making progress, it just takes time. Part of me says I love myself, but when the PTSD talks it makes it sound like I hate myself even if the things it says about me are not true. I am currently trying to distinguish between procrastination and strategic patience as I navigate the abusive family. Part of it is a trauma bond because I still love my brother and younger sister, but if the rest of the system is compromised then I might not be able to stay. I have some money saved up still, but I don't want to deplete my money too quickly. I still need to get some medical complications sorted out before I get back to work. My younger sister seems willing to help me in this. My grandmas likely don't realize how they are enabling my older sister's narcissistic abuse while I am degraded and treated like a scapegoat, isolating me from family holidays as I no longer feel safe at gatherings. This loneliness seems to be driving things like sexual desire even more. This is going to take patience, but there is a fine line between strategic patience and procrastination disguised as strategic patience. If it is possible to recover without the ongoing abuse, then maybe I would be better off leaving sooner but this is a big task.

@DocWatts they are not joking about driving people to suicide. I was in the hospital for mental health where I met other trauma survivors. Some of them were victims of modern day neo nazis who tried to drive them to suicide after doing the same to their friends. They coerce them into jumping off of bridges to disguise the murder as suicide and they get away with this constantly. This is why the suicide statistics are wrong. As it stands nearly 50 percent of murder cases are never solved. That is not counting the proxy suicide murderers because they are not even being recorded as murders. I am also a survivor of a proxy suicide attempt by my abusive family member. I was being targeted even more because of my severe depression and there was sadistic pleasure on the harm being caused with impunity. The other family members still refuse to admit that abuse is even happening and they tell me I am the problem somehow. I really need to leave, but there are some genuine constraints combined with sentimental bullshit around some family members I love. The point remains is that they are definitely not joking about those suicides. I have met survivors and the legal system is terrible at prosecuting this because they don't take psychological abuse as seriously as physical abuse due to the greater difficulty in proving against plausible deniability without direct words.

Does this mean that we will need to disguise ourselves as right wing fascists with the strategy to pretend to support billionaires so they are not alert to what is happening as they lobby against us? We would have to publicly talk about things like meritocracy and free market while downplaying the harms of capitalism. We would then make policies packages as something that gives billionaires more money and keeps wages low, which the government is doing anyway by the way. Then we would find ways to sneak in policies that seem to help billionaires at first but which have down stream effects that ultimately help the poor and gives them more power instead. If you are too open about the problems of the world and those in power, then they will crush you. This might be a noble or necessary lie to work around it. What would you think if I were someone who appeared to be a right wing capitalist fascist but was secretly working to undermine them? Would you consider me very conscious or very unconscious?

@Lyubov basically I have this feeling I call loneliness because I am cutting myself off from an abusive family system. I know I can never get genuine lobe from them because they find my reality too uncomfortable, especially if they are trying to avoid legal accountability while being smug in the suffering they cause me. I have become the family scapegoat and I cannot express myself and be seen for who I am because of all the lies that were spread about me and the unwillingness of other family members to acknowledge the harm caused. They don't want accountability so they they blame me. I am experiencing a combination of grief and rage because I didn't have the opportunity to have a family that would love me beyond a stupid performance designed to manipulate me. If they cannot accept me or my point of view and they must enable further abuse, then I must remain in no contact with them. I can't afford to give in to the trauma bond and go back to them. They are the cause of my mental health problems in the first place that I am trying to recover from. I just hate the fact that my younger siblings are also lost to me in the process. They are too young to understand these dynamics, and my younger sister sometimes takes my sister's word for it even if she lies about me. My younger brother is still in highschool and I don't want to dump this shit on him. I shouldn't turn to him for emotional support. I am realizing that I never had the opportunity to be with someone who would be with me and see me for who I am. I can see the therapist once a week, but I want someone I can speak to everyday. I know not to make them a therapist, but I still want a hug and someone to talk to. I've been avoiding relationships all my life because I learned that love was a lie and a tool to manipulate in addition to being unworthy of love of course. I hate carrying the weight of everything on my own.

@Sugarcoat I have figured out another reason not to kill yourself. It is a framework that acknowledges the reality of suicide without moralizing against you. Basically, if you are suicidal, then most likely you are dealing with circumstances that no human being should have to cope with. In this sense it is not really about you, but rather something deeply unfair and difficult that overwhelms your ability to cope. What this means is that you need help coping with an impossible situation. The problem is that our current system is often dysfunctional and fails people who reach out for help by prescribing pills that make things worse. Therefore, if I feel suicidal, then I want help coping with something extremely difficult. However, the reason people do kill themselves is if they feel that they cannot be helped. From this point of view, if I am suicidal then I want to reach out to every possible source I can imagine in the hopes of finding one person who cares, as this is what it takes to start making things at least a little bit better. It makes sense to approach suicidal thoughts in this way if you are approaching the ultimate final decision to take your own life.

Okay, I remember that the forum said it didn't want me posting while I am high. Therefore, I am texting this reminder to tell me to wait until later so I don't forget to tell you about what I experienced while I was high. I hope you can be understanding. See you soon. Sorry for technically posting while high, but I want to make sure I don't forget to tell you. Love and Peace

I think what I am discovering is that my body is just very sensitive to drug treatment. This is not just with cannabis, but also with all kinds of drugs used by the hospitals. They pretty much always have these adverse affects that don't solve the problem. I frequently have the opposite of the intended reaction to all kinds of pills. My body might not be cut out for this kind of treatment that the medical industry is using all the time. Not to mention that the pills and diagnosis are often rushed, leading to many errors.

I have my notes here. I took one cannabis based gummy and I seem to be sensitive to them, triggering these kinds of experiences. From this state I was contemplating things like God and the nature of reality. However, I was also going through a hard time because I recently had a difficult with my sister regarding sexual abuse in our early childhood that has serious legal implications for the family depending on what evidence is put together. The first insight was infinite relativism. It was like reality was structured such that all realities were simultaneously both real and imaginary. This included even God being so omnipotent that God could structure reality such that God both exists and does not exist simultaneously. This is a paradox with ego as well because in a sense I do exist and in a sense I don't exist. It happens this way because reality is perspectival, thus allowing for wild paradoxes and contradictions. The possibilities are infinite, yet they all cancel out. This seems to correspond to what Leo says about things like reality being deeply relativistic. What I found was that asking "what is not relativistic" is a trap because it assumes Absolute is not relativistic and it is an assumption about the nature of truth. Absolute could simply mean that reality is such that everything is relative. I don't think this is really a contradiction and it seems to make perfect sense to me. During the trip I explored the limits of my capacity for love. My capacity for love reached to a lot of different people, but I ended up getting stuck at Nazis because I think they are bastards. This seems to be one of the limits of my capacity for love, but God's capacity for love would be greater and include even them. Perhaps love does not have to mean accepting someone for who they are. Maybe I could accept that they are bastards and that I hate them. That seems to be the most love I could offer people like that. I don't like cruelty and I have a hard time enjoying people who would be cruel to others especially when it involves sexually abusing children. However, I can accept the reality of cruelty without it needing to be pleasant. It seems that I try to process my trauma through maintaining as much love and compassion as I can while trying to understand people who seem incomprehensible so that I can apply it to people who might harm me, thus reducing how much pain I feel. My main reason for maintaining love is because I try to distinguish myself from people who clearly lack love of others, but this implies a duality such that love cannot be complete to the point of me being one with such monsters. This is the limit of things like compassion as it is often used to distinguish ourselves from bad people and be unlike them rather than one with them because I don't want to be a monster myself which I feared due to my exposure to sexual predators in childhood. I noted that I recently ended up in the hospital. I ended up withdrawing from medication that caused me chest pain and it caused mental instability. Others feared that I would kill myself, so the police took me to the hospital even though I did everything I could to avoid going because of the fear of getting more bad pills that hurt me. I wanted to include that my state of mind was like this prior to taking the gummy. I felt that this particular state was helping me to process things that happened to me, but I was worried that it could turn into some kind of psychological addiction because of how good it felt to have some of these weights lifted off of me. Part of me may have feared going back into a suicidal state in which I was unable to cope with existing. I noticed that I was constantly doubting myself, but then I started to seriously doubt doubt. I noticed that doubt was happening instinctively as if it were programmed rather than being a function of truth seeking. I noticed that I was not choosing to doubt, which made me realize that this behavior was deeply unconscious. This casts a lot of doubt on doubt if I don't even control the process of doubting and it just happens to me. How do I know it is getting me closer to truth rather than leaving me in endless analysis paralysis? I noted that doubt is often a survival tool that can get as further from truth through selective doubt based on our biases against ideas or worldviews we don't like. I would have to know why I am doubting and I would need to do so very consciously in order to make sure doubt isn't being used to fool myself. I have many more notes. I'll fill in more details later. This may not have been some mind blowing awakening, but as I integrated these insights it helped stabilize me and it made me feel much more grounded rather than panicked. This is likely part of how this cannabis based gummy was designed for relaxation and sleep aid, but because of my sensitivity I get a little high off of it. I previously got a much higher hit off of it the first time I tried it, but I am not concerned about chasing a previous high. I am more concerned with the insights I gain and how I integrate them from this heightened sensitivity when it happens.

I think what seems to be helping me is keeping interpretation to a minimal. I want to focus as much as possible on just what I observed. I notice that interpretations seem to open the door for all kinds of self-deception because there are many competing explanations which then depends on your biases. If I state just what I observed, then I feel much more grounded and less confused. This is what I am doing for things like the sex trafficking incident. I called the sexual assault hotline and they are trying to get me into a free program for people like me. They will call back in a couple of days. Staying grounded in direct experience rather than the thought of what it all means seems to avoid a lot of self deception because the possibilities are endless and it leads to constant confusion.

Alright, my Aunt is fine with the situation. I told her that I was having a freak out moment and mental health problem because of the nightmare about my Uncle molesting me and my sister. I took the gummy and it helped me relax and feel better. She told me that she wanted me to take the other two pills, but not the gummies on most nights. She was happy that the gummies helped me, but wanted me to use them in the best way. She said that if I am having extreme emotional problems like those then I may use them, but don't mix them with other medications if I don't need to or I am not having that kind of moment. I still have things to do before I give the full story though. This is part of the story. I genuinely felt like I had an impossible weight being lifted off of me and it was very helpful because of the distress I was in. I just didn't want it to turn into a psychological addiction and wanted to make sure she was comfortable.

I took notes while it was happening but I need to get a hold of my aunt first. She didn't intend for me to get high off of a weed gummy. I want to make sure she is okay first. She might not want me using these anymore and I want to respect her autonomy before I continue using the psychologically addicting drug that could in her eyes become a problem. I want to talk with her first before I say everything here.

@Basman You actually make a good point here. When I was young especially, due to autism. I experience the world very differently from the people around me. People often thought I was weird and it made me feel isolated. People with autism are also extremely prone to PTSD due to emotional and psychological abuse, about ten times compared to the general population due to sensory overload. This is actually very important, and I am glad you noticed this. It might be a combination of autism and bipolar disorder and depression and PTSD and other things. I swear I never chose to be this way. This may be how my brain is wired, but thanks for that. I don't buy everything you said, but this piece is actually good and I am happy that you cared enough to respond and put some thought into this. Part of my confusion is not that I am stuck in one interpretation. I am actually aware of many interpretations and it can be overwhelming and confusing. In this case I believe multiple things are true simultaneously. For example, the medical system exploited me because it is a for profit system full of insurance scams that don't cover shit. If you don't live in America, you might not know this. It is also true that the people often don't realize what they are doing. Society is full of people who don't fully see their role in the system and how they contribute to the dysfunction. The doctors themselves are not necessarily acting out of malice, but even in ignorance they may perpetuate some of the problems. I feel like people misinterpret this about me a lot. The reason I am so lost and confused is not because I am stuck in one interpretation and I believe it is absolutely true no matter what. It is because I am overwhelmed by tons of different interpretations. It makes me confused and it causes me to get lost. It leads to rumination because of my struggle to understand the world from this level of complexity. I am using a lot of mental space to hold these interpretations even around very challenging issues. It is just that part of how trauma works is that sometimes it fucks with the actual neurology of your brain and it makes it hard to get these things out and make them stop. Don't get stuck in the interpretation that I am stuck in one interpretation. Others may not be open to multiple interpretations including the possibility that I am open to multiple interpretations. This feels like a projection to me under many circumstances when people assume I am close-minded even though open-mindedness is one of my core values in life since I was a child. I saw the horrors of religious fundamentalism and political violence when people assumed that their interpretation was the one true perspective. I would not want to be like them. At the same time the paradox I grapple with is that I also need some kind of ground to stand on so I can actually move through life. It is like a psychological need to have a stable sense of reality, but for me this is constantly being undermined. For me this is a difficult paradox to navigate because their really are a lot of interpretations, but this also makes it very hard to function when it overwhelms me. I should probably mention that I also get annoyed by the self-help platitudes around mindset because it becomes unfalsifiable. Literally anything I say could be framed as me not having success with personal development because of a mindset problem. A similar unfalsifiable position would be if you tried to improve yourself by devoting your life to Christ, discovered it didn't work, and then the church tells you that you just need more faith. In this situation your mindset is the problem and that is why you are miserable. This mindset argument is personal development's built in mechanism for dismissing failures as individual problems rather than as potentially a problem with self-help itself. Religion would do exactly the same thing, but they will call it faith instead of mindset when it does not work. Seriously think about this. How would I prove you wrong if you just told me that I had a mindset problem? You would likely assume that forever. If ever I succeed it is because I now had the right mindset and personal development was right from the beginning with no mistake or flaw whatsoever in these assumptions and interpretations of the situation. Framing things as a mindset problem is one interpretation of the situation. Once again, I am open to the possibility, but people assume that because I see the potential flaw in this, that I automatically believe this interpretation is the one true one as if I am a fundamentalist who thinks my one interpretation is always correct in this situation. The assumption is again that I am close-minded therefore I don't succeed in personal development. Obviously, I am not stupid and I know that mindset is a factor and a possibility, but self-help wants to assume this is everything that is wrong with the situation in the event that I do not succeed. How would I prove to you that I do not have a mindset problem? Are people just assuming that they know how my mind actually works? This is mind reading and it is often wrong. Nevertheless, personal development insists that it can read my mind in this situation and I am just stuck in one interpretation. It is possible that I am overwhelmed by all the possible interpretations and this is my mental and sensory overload as someone with autism. It makes me chaotic because I struggle to establish a stable sense of reality. Obviously I am open-minded to the possibility that I hallucinated all of my trauma including the existence of other human beings and family. Why else would I be listening to people like Leo talk about this kind of stuff? Why is not considered that I could be grappling with the paradox that there are so many interpretations, yet I need a way to function through some kind of stable sense of reality? Why are people so stuck in this one interpretation and then calling me the close-minded one who can't see the other interpretations? This is insane and people are not open-minded to these possibilities so they make all these assumptions about how I actually think and function. This makes me feel isolated and alone because clearly people do not see me for who I am and many times they genuinely do not care or everything I say just goes over their head. I hope you understand some of this frustration. Thanks for your support.

@Basman this is brilliant. Yes. I have been conditioned with the belief that I should be happy and I should love myself. I have had this seared into my brain since I was a young child. I felt that the fact that I was unable to love myself because of these things were further proof of my failure and inadequacy. This is also likely why I put purpose on a pedestal as it has to do with being self made and successful as if it would make me happy. I never actually managed to undo these kinds of beliefs and dispositions. I guess I can try to talk about these more openly as they tie into some of my existential problems and questions which ultimately led me to actualized.org. Why do I believe I need to be happy? Why do I believe unhappiness makes me inadequate? What does success mean to me? Why do I believe being successful will make me adequate? Starting out, the belief that I needed to be happy seems to have started when I went to the doctor with my mom as a young child. The doctors started asking me if I was happy. I didn't know why they were asking these questions. Apparently they knew I was at a higher risk of suicide because of my father abandoning me. When asked these questions I would pause and seem confused. I wasn't sure what it meant to be happy. Part of me felt deeply uncomfortable and didn't want to tell them no. Therefore I ended up just smiling and laughing and then saying "well I'm happy now. So now what?" They ended up accepting this answer. Now that I think about it, they were completely full of shit because it should be obvious that something is up here if the child is hesitant and unclear as to what is meant by happiness. Basically they were teaching me to mask. At the same time it made me think along the lines of them wanting me to feel satisfied in life in general, but they never told me what that would look like. They probably didn't want to tell me that satisfaction in life would be having a loving and present father along with my mother. That would make me happy in life, but I never had that. At the same time I got the impression like I was supposed to be happy because they wanted me to. They never told me what I should be looking for in a happy life. It left me with this sense that being unhappy was somehow unacceptable but they never told me why they suspected I would be unhappy, so I was deeply confused by this. I never had the experience of a present and loving father, so how would I know that that is what I wanted and needed? I thought it was normal for fathers to abandon their kids and leave them with single mothers given the example I saw in my parents. But the belief that I should be happy seemed to stem from this. It was a means of denying my misery of my father's abandonment. They knew from the beginning that I was a higher risk of suicide but did not tell me anything about what they were getting at, leaving me lost and confused as to what happiness means. To me happiness means having present and loving parents who respect each other and set a good example for their children so I can grow up to be like them rather than being lost in life by being forced to figure out everything myself. I had no real guidance and I am so fucking tired of trying to figure out everything myself without the guidance of a close decent human being who I can trust. This would then tie into why I think unhappiness makes me inadequate. I was left with the impression that my mom wanted me to happy and that it was somehow wrong if I was unhappy. They never told me why though. It was likely because they knew I would be more likely to die by suicide because of this. Therefore, the reason I cannot be unhappy is because it means that I would have no reason to live and I would be suffering to the point that I would be better off dying by suicide. Unhappiness to me means suicidal depression. I think it is fair to say that I don't want to live my life with this depression and unhappiness. This would be unacceptable to my mother because it would make her unhappy which in turn might make her angry with me leading to punishment or negative consequences. At the same time, the reality is that I cannot have happiness in the form of a loving family to be present for me. Therefore I need to invent some other form of happiness that doesn't involve my family. I was also afraid of starting a family because I felt that I was unworthy of existence and people would not love me if they knew who I was on the inside. I was afraid that my mother might abandon me as well like my father. To me I start to crave intimacy and connection but I simultaneously avoid it because I feel that I would not be wanted. I repeated the inappropriate sexual behavior my uncle did with children when I was six with my sister once I was exposed to it and I felt it made me unworthy of love as my mom thought I was an irredeemable bastard. I felt I was stupid for not knowing better and repeating this behavior. I felt that I was fundamentally a bad person who needed redemption even though it was already decided to be impossible. I can never be happy in life because I am not wanted. To this day I want a romantic partner who will be there for me and see me for who I am. However I doubt I would be wanted because of my mental health problems like bipolar disorder, PTSD, and others. I now lost my job and struggle to maintain consistent income. I tried getting medical help but the medical system exploited me with ineffective treatment and drained my money. I try to redeem myself through life purpose but it is impossible. Therefore I want to kill myself. What are your thoughts?

@theleelajoker I'm looking for help in processing sexual abuse. My ability to cope was overwhelmed no matter what I tried. I don't know that people here would have any advice other than therapy. The problem is that I am unable to access my therapist at this time so I needed to find some other why to handle this kind of material. One of the things that stuck with me was the twisted and perverted smiles of such creeps. Any advice for processing these things outside of try to endure the unbearable while waiting for therapy?

I don't think you did anything wrong even if it wasn't well received. You are somebody who needs help and sometimes it is coming out even if others might not want to hear it. You may be reacting to internalized shame from trauma itself. Although logic cannot overcome mental health problems, I hope that you can one day reach security in yourself to a point that you don't need to hide things from yourself as well the teachers. You were likely looking for some kind of connection or the hopes of relating to someone and finding compassion that you may desperately need. In my experience, I have often been deeply embarrassed by so much as an unpleasant thought. You likely do not deserve to carry this level of shame and it may be disproportionate to the situation. That said, I don't know how to take the shame away through words alone. You may have been conditioned over several years to see yourself in this way and it now feels like reality. I never really had any luck trying to erase memories. I ended up doing the opposite and creating an identity based around traumatic events that would always come back into my mind. What do you think this interaction you had says about you? Do you think it reveals something like your stupidity or the fact that you are weak or too easily hurt? What exactly is embarrassing about this and what is your psyche telling you about yourself because of this embarrassment? I don't think these things of you, but it might help to articulate what exactly your psyche is trying to say about you and how it is characterizing you. Bear in mind that the mind's evaluation of itself is often wrong even if it feels natural to think this way and completely instinctual. What ever it takes, I hope you will not have to live your life with such shame.

I consider myself solipsistic. Since I was a child I had this sense that I could be so deeply self deceived as to hallucinate this entire experience and imagine other human beings with whom I would have relationships that were illusory. It was very destabilizing and I didn't know how to deal with it. Eventually I accepted not knowing because I realized that no intellectual framework no matter how sophisticated could distinguish between real knowledge and dream knowledge. I found peace in not knowing if any of this was real or not while holding both possibilities and operating within both simultaneously.

I have been doing more research into the decline of empires like the US. I thought it was bad because of the corporate capture and the deficit crisis. However, the situation appears to be even worse than I thought. I believe that the US government has been captured by its own military which now holds permanent undue influence over the entire political process. The current governmental, military, and corporate apparatus that runs our politics appears to be irreversible and irreformable. I see no way for America to escape this deeply corrupted system without complete collapse caused by our imperial overreach and deficit crisis. I have done research into the origins of the Military Industrial Complex, how it came to be, and how it came to capture the government of the America for its own agenda regardless of public dissent. As I have been doing this research, I understand that most of the time conspiracy theories are ungrounded in reality and completely baseless. However, there have been various conspiracy theories about our government that proved correct about deep corruption. These theories include COINTELPRO, MK-Ultra, NSA mass surveillance, Operation Northwoods, Iran-Contra Affair, and others. I would like to be cautious in the certainty placed in the conclusions presented here because of the incomplete information that is being worked with. However, the evidence seems compelling and I would like to discuss what I have discovered and its implications. It is possible that I am about to highlight one of the rare times a conspiracy theory holds legitimate weight. Even if the theory is not true, there are still other aspects of it which explain the current state of American politics. Throughout human history governments have formed militaries designed for their protection. However, on some occasions their military goes rogue and accumulates so much power that they cannot be controlled by their own government. This can lead to military leaders hijacking the government though capturing the democratic processes and institutions while occasionally carrying out assassinations of their own political leaders. The Late Roman Empire had cases in which the Praetorian Guard were supposed to protect the emperor, but repeatedly assassinated leaders who did not serve their interests. In the Ottoman Empire Janissaries controlled sultans and blocked various reforms that went against their interests. In Imperial Japan their own military factions controlled civilian government, contributing to overexpansion. The list goes on and it is possible that the US military industrial complex is no exception. This system has amassed great power and control over the government regardless of which party is in power. Our military has demonstrated a willingness to carry out terrorist attacks against US civilians as false flag operations designed to provoke wars with other nations like Cuba. Our military seems to have no legal boundary it is not willing to cross to serve its own interests. Therefore, the system claiming to serve our national security appears to be the greatest threat to our national security. What would America do if its own military decided it wanted to turn against us and install whatever government it wanted? It has already done this to many other countries throughout history, and the US itself may not be an exception. President Eisenhower and later Kennedy showed great resistance to the expansion of military power. Eisenhower appeared to be somewhat successful. Meanwhile Kennedy was successful at first until his assassination after which Johnson was put in power. Johnson immediately reversed Kennedy's decisions even though his peaceful policies were showing promise. Kennedy had resisted escalating the war in Vietnam as he also sought peaceful resolutions with Cuba. Furthermore, as soon as Kennedy was assassinated, the previous government workers which he had fired for their terrorist plots were immediately put back in power under Johnson. The government proceeded to butcher every step of the investigation into the Presidential assassination so systematically, that it is hard to attribute all of these failures to mere incompetence. In fact sometimes governments use the cover of incompetence as a cover for calculated decisions as they did during WWII by "appeasing the bully." The cover pattern of the investigation included repairing the car, thus tampering with evidence, allowing the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, a key witness, and the CIA practice of destroying sensitive documents to ensure they are never leaked, including Kennedy files. The initial cover story was that Cuba was behind the assassination. However, the official narrative does not hold under scrutiny because if Kennedy was seeking peace with Cuba and was largely successful, then it does not make sense for Cuba to assassinate him. Once again, the military industrial complex has a more clear motive for assassinating the President because he was preventing the expansion of perpetual military spending while preventing the military from carrying out terrorist attacks on Americans by firing key government officials. Furthermore, the later investigation of the assassination yielded limited findings, claiming it was a conspiracy rather than Oswald being a lone actor as initially reported. You would think that if a Presidential assassination were so serious, then it would warrant a thorough investigation, but this never came. The behavior I am describing suggests an institutional cover-up by the CIA. There have also been recent revelations that the CIA had been lying for decades about officer George Joannides who worked with anti-Castro groups that publicized Oswald's pro-Castro activities after his assassination, suggesting a coordinated attempt to start war with Cuba similar to the other terrorist plots like Operation Northwoods which Kennedy prevented. Although we may never know who was truly behind this conspiracy, the impact of this assassination is clear. The military industrial complex immediately captured the US government and installed a system that would forever serve their interests. It created a system of perpetual military spending and endless wars. Every President following Kennedy's assassination has been far more hawkish. Even those that were initially peaceful eventually had to flip. It appears that the military industrial complex has captured the democratic apparatus and made peaceful foreign policy practically impossible because the system in place perpetually funds new weapons systems as the military constantly looks for and creates new threats to justify intervention. This kind of dynamic has created a policy lock in system that has made it impossible for the US to stop its imperial overreach even when it is clearly destructive like in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Moving forward, this historical analysis explains why it is impossible to change American foreign policy. The democratic apparatus is being run by the military industrial complex who benefit from perpetual war and endless deficit spending. I see no means to challenge this kind of system. I believe the only way out of this broken government is to leave the US and let the economy implode due to endless US imperial overreach, leading to the decline of empires throughout history as demonstrated in Dalio's model. I see no movement within this system that could overcome this level of corruption, not to mention to financial capture of other massive corporations which also block any reform that does not benefit them. Our government is inflexible and irreformable, and there is no politician we can elect that can overcome this kind of corruption. The system is completely entrenched and the entire government itself has become a tool for this corruption. Of course there is more evidence we could discuss regarding the assassination. To this day the military industrial complex continues to run rogue. There are various covert operations being carried out without the oversight of Congress. This exposed operations include assassination plots, government coups, mind control, and many other covert operations that have gone rogue from the government. It is clear that the military has become too powerful for our own government to control as it now takes in more money than the next ten countries combined. This is unsustainable and clearly destructive, but there is likely nothing we can do to change our course from inevitable destruction.