 G'day mate 40 here, so I think I know why you're here Some dude put his fist in your anus and there was excruciating pain But let's try to unpack what really went on there like first of all He asked you for permission, right and and you said yes Like he didn't want you to say no You could have said no to him But you said yes You told him he could put his fist in your anus So in effect you put his fist in your anus because you told him he could But you blame him for that Do you blame other blokes for putting their fists in your anus when you consent to that? All right, so I'm speaking metaphorically here I'm not speaking literally Please God most of us have not had the experience of being fisted All right, so you say no to yourself and you blame him for that choice So I'm reading this book the lies we tell ourselves how to face the truth Accept yourself and create a better life Right you ready to create a better life. This is a terrific book by a John Fredrickson I'm just really interested in the general topic of the lies we tell ourselves Now, why do we do that? All right, so when we say no to ourselves and then we blame other people for taking advantage of us So what did you feel when some bloke asked you if he could put his fist in your anus? You probably didn't like the idea. So what were you feeling towards that bloke? You were probably feeling angry. You were angry with him and then you dealt with your anger by turning it on yourself By inviting him to hurt you So you got angry with him you forgot your anger you turned it on yourself and you invited him to hurt you So you invited him to punish you for being angry with him All right, so this is a terrific book here by John Fredrickson I've been downloading all these books on the lies we tell ourselves So this one got the most ratings on Amazon how to face the truth accept yourself and create a better life So I started out by reading some articles on the lies we tell ourselves and so from the suggestions I came out with a list and I don't think I tell myself these lies Anymore, but only in my life. I did so there's nothing I can do So that's the the sense of victimhood that is often possessed me or there's something inherently wrong with me That that would that would be something I would think I Would change but I can't because of this situation this you know this health problem this financial problem I know what I'm doing. Okay. I still still sometimes tell myself that lie. I know what I'm doing I'm just not good at X. Yeah, that's that's something fairly common. I say to myself I don't regret anything. Yeah That's an attitude that I take towards life because it just doesn't serve me to walk around with regrets So I take you out to that given who I was at the time. I could not have acted differently I'm unlucky. Yeah, when I've been in victim mode, I certainly felt that when I'm ready. I'll finally do X. I Never had a chance Victim of thinking and that's just who I am So I just opened up a book on the topic by therapist John Fredrickson And he says we become well by relating to what is here Which is very much like 12-step teachings that Humility is accepting reality. It's a very simple definition of Humility, right? It's not a religious definition. It's not a super spiritual definition. It's just a really pragmatic definition Humility is accepting reality. How do you know that you are not in humility because you get humiliated We get humiliated when we don't accept reality So the reality is right now. I'm making this video and only one person is watching No, I have complete faith that in time hundreds of people will watch this video But reality is reality. So that's off. Just one person is watching Okay, we become well by relating to reality by relating to what is here. We become sick By relating to our fantasies. So I found out as a kid that I could get away from my problems by living in fantasy And so I developed all sorts of grandiose narcissistic self-aggrandizing thinking which would temporarily make me feel better But then would make me less equipped to deal with reality So a good therapist stops us from running away from our souls so that we can rest in reality So welcome to the reality show When we remain in this moment this moment is the only home we have I read that in the book This moment is the only home we have a place for you right here this moment Is our only home Remaining in the moment we feel our feelings Which reach out to us through anxiety anxiety? Invites us to dive into the places from which we always run The places we are afraid to descend into and to explore So therapists give us this message what you run from is where you need to rest What you fear you need to face what you ignore you need to hear So I'm about to make a big move to Sydney, Australia About 75 percent sure I'll make this move, but I don't trust my own judgment So I'm talking to a lot of friends and I want to make sure that I'm not trying to do a geographic I don't want to be running away from anything All right What I want to run from is where I need to rest what I fear I need to face But I ignore I need to hear So I'm going to go back to Los Angeles in a few weeks And I'm going to spend some time in Los Angeles and see if I still yearn to move to Sydney So this book says you are the most important person you will ever meet Why not be on good terms with yourself? so I talked about that in a recent stream It's a new new theory I've discovered about how we filter everything Through our own sense of self So it's self verification theory, all right If we think we're a good person Then when people tell us we're a good person that just verifies what we already think we're always telling people Manipulating people putting ourselves in situations where people will verify what we already think about us and Probably the more desperate we are to get people to think of us a certain way The more anxiety we've got going and the more trouble we're in So you are the most important person you will ever meet why not be on good terms with yourself So I think about 70 percent of people are on reasonably good terms with themselves And then the other 30 percent are addicts or alcoholics or sex addicts Very troubled souls Right, so if you have a negative self image You will filter everything that happens to you through that self image. That's reality And when you get that negative view of yourself reinforced to you then it will calm you down But if you have a negative view of yourself and other people give you positive feedback that will disturb you and disorient you so at work According to conventional thinking your relationship with your boss is the most important relationship you will have at work But maybe your relationship with yourself is the most important relationship you will have because To have a good relationship with your boss, you're going to have to have a good relationship with yourself Your boss is not going to relate well to you if you are hating on yourself If you have a bad relationship with yourself if you are ill at ease with yourself other people are going to be ill at ease with you so Why not be on good terms with yourself and then extend that out to other people So to be on good terms with ourselves We have to listen Underneath our words underneath our excuses Underneath the explanations we use underneath the stories we tell underneath our defenses underneath our lies that we have to be at ease With the reality of ourselves and the reality of ourselves is we're all incredibly vulnerable We all have fears. We all have weak points. We all have buttons that can get pushed And accepting that reality makes us less liable to Have our buttons pushed These beliefs that we have about ourselves chord projections seem true because they are real They are the realities we reject in ourselves and we relocate in others If we criticize ourselves, we imagine others criticize us. If we ignore ourselves, we imagine others ignore us We fail to care for ourselves We believe people don't care for us However, the persons we project upon can be the mirrors we look at to see learn and accept what we reject in ourselves That's good That's good So Often when I talk in therapy about myself in a very harsh critical way Sometimes my therapist would say whose voice is that and I think about it and go, oh, yeah, that's my father's voice You know, I've internalized my father's critical voice And when we ignore ourselves Then imagine others are going to ignore us because we're not we're not worthy of being seen So I've had several friends go through a spiritual breakdown where Their beliefs about the world were shown to be false And so everything that they held to be true and sacred Was destroyed Everything that they clung to in their belief system had had blown up in the face of of life All right, that's called a spiritual emergency When your understanding of how the world works is smashed up is blown up to smithereens Your narratives about life Do not fit reality All right, that leads to a nervous breakdown a spiritual crisis to depression But breakdowns Point to deeper truths because only that which is false in you can break down All right, so if you have stories about the world which are shown to be false only that which is false can break down Right truth does not break So you could call this recognition waking up waking up or just self-realization Now often facts kill our wishes facts kill our fantasy life and then some people Reality is so painful That they kill themselves to wipe out the pain of their dying fantasy What one suicide researcher called psych ache So when some people experience the living death of a dying dream They may choose physical death To abort the painful birth known as grieving So waiting is the magic wand We hope will make life fit our fantasy That's good waiting is the magic wand. We hope will make life fit our fantasy So what am I waiting for? What what do I think is going to come along? and Change life so that it fits my fantasies But perhaps our fantasies must change to fit what is here When we start waiting for life to change we change instead Every crisis in life cracks our defenses and unlocks our feelings Revealing hidden dimensions in ourselves after bearing those hidden dimensions We experience insights rising from within when we dive inside we experience ourselves more deeply We find the wisdom for which we longed and we can choose whether to deny reality or to embrace it So the reality is you have to work hard to make a living Reality is for most people they have to fit themselves to their boss Reality is that working for a living means being a wage slave for 40 hours a week Reality means The more attuned you are to what your boss wants and the more you do what your boss wants rather than what you want The more successful you will be at work So you have to subordinate yourself To your boss's wishes to hold down a job Feelings are forms of love. They are invitations to embrace reality So that the force can drop away revealing the real in you Revenge is a form of magic when we exact revenge We pretend that we can get rid of our pain by putting it in other people So when we carry around resentment and yearning for revenge It's like we're an air traffic controller, but we've got all these planes of Plans for revenge and resentment just buzzing around so that we can't concentrate on the real planes that we have to land So we may have 10 planes that we have to land 10 important things that we need to do today But we're also carrying around 20 different resentments. So so just concentrating on 10 planes. We've got 30 planes out there that we need to land That's why life filled with resentment doesn't work Why do we tell ourselves lies? To avoid the feelings that arise when we face reality We avoid the truths of our lies by waiting for our fantasies to become true other than face what is true So I have had the fantasy of just being a full-time youtuber But that's not going to happen right I luckily I didn't uh I didn't abstain from work And I've always made sure that I've had other sources of income So whatever money I make from youtube is just a bonus. I've never depended upon my my youtube income to pay the bills So I just noticed jfgrp Made a video 10 reasons why odyssey is better than youtube So he's done his last uh four streams on odyssey only So it sounds like jfgrp is switching to odyssey permanently. You may just do an occasional video on youtube And he was banned from twitter a few days ago Given the same bogus explanation that keith woods was that uh, but they were spamming the platform so jf mentioned that he was spending five hours a day on twitter And he's feeling so much happier and more productive now that he no longer is on twitter So i'm sure that's true Judging by what he says if you're spending hours a day on twitter, that's not time well spent Waiting for what is real to become unreal. It's how we lie to ourselves About our loved ones ourselves and life itself right so Various girlfriends break up with me and you know, they were never coming back and those were never relationships that were meant to last We suffer because we fight reality a fight. We will always lose Yeah, that's good So i'm 55 years old now. I don't have energy and time and inclination to keep fighting reality I want to have a positive relationship with reality So reality is i'm on vacation here in australia Reality is i'm thinking of moving here reality is i'm enjoying time with my family reality is i'm reading books right now and Journaling and thought oh i'll make a quick video on the lies we tell ourselves I just downloaded like four different books. They all include the phrase the lies we tell ourselves Look, there's so many There's john fred rickson the lies we tell ourselves how to face the truth accept yourself and create a better life Then there's dana morocco the top 10 lies we tell ourselves and how to stop living them Then there's ryan o carnell i'm special And otherwise we tell ourselves to get through our 20s So people in their 18s and 20s tend to have a dramatic overestimation of their own abilities and their own chances And there's another book here lauren home daily dishonesty the beautiful little lies we tell ourselves every day And uh There are more books than that Just put the lies we tell ourselves into Amazon there's a hallow quintine book Lies we tell ourselves Lies we tell ourselves colon the psychology of self-deception i'm special The lies we tell ourselves how to overcome lies and experience the emotional health intimate relationships and spiritual fulfillment you've been seeking The top 10 lies we tell ourselves and how to stop living them the lies we tell ourselves There's not enough time and other lies we tell ourselves Lies we tell ourselves colon how to say no to temptation and put an end to compromise The truth and other lies we tell ourselves learn how to choose the words that determine the outcomes in your life Useful delusions the power and paradox of the self-deceiving brain that looks good Okay, that's got more reviews than anything else lies. We believe about God Okay, so lots of books here on the theme of the lies we tell ourselves This is this is a topic i'm fascinated in right now So now madam how much we fight reality reality always wins So whatever it is that i think i might avoid by leaving los angeles and moving to sydney It's gonna come with me Rather than face what is we may choose what is not here waiting for our fantasies to appear and make reality disappear so A normal person spends six to eight hours at least around other people So i had weeks and months whereas only spending about an hour a day around other people That's not healthy That's living in fantasy When we maintain our illusions the life we have passes by while we wait for a fantasy life that never arrives So It's hard to maintain your illusions when you have other people in your life when you're talking to other people Even on youtube And as long as you're interacting with other people, it's very hard to maintain your illusions. You have to be a particular particular force of of sick To be able to maintain gross delusions and illusions when you're interacting with others spending six to eight hours with other people every day presuming that some of those people have some Care for you. All right, if you're just dealing with people who are forced to interact with you for business or social reasons But they don't care about you. You may you may not get the The feedback that you need When we maintain our illusions the life we have passes by while we wait for a fantasy life that never arrives So you can't maintain your illusions when you have close friends All right, your friends won't permit you to maintain your illusions So the losses of life are then compounded by the losses we inflict upon ourselves We get attached to fantasies of how we should be loved how we should be respected how we should be desired Our suffering is not caused by these fantasies but by our attachment to them So that reminds me I was taking a writing class And inspired by my writing class with the writing teacher terry silverman in los angeles I started Writing about what I find erotic and I read that essay to the class and I was later told that essay was quite inappropriate to to share with the class that you know may have traumatized people who Been through some bad things like the bad things I was writing about that I find erotic So I accepted that that was inappropriate to read to a class so I started sharing it with some friends And some of my many of my friends really resonated So I guess they dealt with the same eroticized rage issues that I did Then I I took it to therapy and I read it to my therapist and said wow that sounds like a eroticized rage And since I heard that phrase first time I'd ever heard that phrase Like whoa, it struck me and I went home and I googled it right before shabbat And I said oh wow I've got a eroticized rage and that's a form of sex and love addiction I better get a 12-step program to get help and that marked the beginning of a significant improvement in my life Which began with just writing just journaling right a journal quite a bit And then out of the journaling I'll get an idea for an essay and then I'll start sharing it with friends Sharing it with the therapist So having people in my life that I could share these things with I got the feedback that I needed and uh realizes that I needed to Make make a change go in a new direction get some help and enter a 12-step program for love addiction G'day Jim Bowden. You're still working. Guess what Luke pops up on my screen. Happy new year, mate We'll catch up with you in Sydney. I'll see you in a few days. Happy new year, Jim and Jim Bowden And uh, don't get the Omicron So something like 23,000 people have tested positive for Omicron in New South Wales So 20,000 in LA county which has You know significantly more people than the New South Wales so what are the latest figures in Yeah, about 22,000 in New South Wales have the Omicron But apparently very few people get hospitalized and very few people die from from the Omicron, so That's good Reality often disappoints whereas fantasy seduces us with the promise of infinite fulfillment. So like real life women have flaws And real life women say no And real life women get headaches and get colds Okay art bell solid topic with Luke big talk of a grand move ignoring 10,000 books to haul from LA while hauling 40,000 pounds of horse down Yeah, the lies we tell ourselves. I can't afford to tell myself any lies right now I need to just face the truth. I'm about to make a big move to sydney. I've spent I've spent about 42 Of my last 45 years living in california Now i'm moving back to australia The luke's we tell ourselves happy 2022 So what's all the really weird spam like vasctec vot fyi and What's with the people imitating vivian vivian veritas So someone was imitating vivian veritas They even set up a vivian veritas youtube channel, which is not vivian and came into Came into the stream on sunday saying Hey luke you look so amazing out by the way. I'm getting divorced. Well, that's not the real vivian so We have a merry prankster in our midst Who would have thought that on the internet people don't always tell the truth? Okay, the lies we tell ourselves one of the primary lies you tell yourself. This is a safe place But you can share Reality often disappoints whereas fantasy seduces us with the promise of infinite fulfillment. So You can have this whole second life on the internet You know creating alternate characters. I don't have any Characters on the internet that are not not under my name so But creating a second life on the internet. That's where you get to live your fantasies Because reality disappoints Well, I think often reality disappoints because you don't like the people that you're around You might need to move to a better community might need to move to australia mate When we see a therapist we mourn the deaths of those seductive promises Promises about how we should be loved how we should be admired When we avoid these painful feelings we suffer the symptoms that result from ignoring the emotional truth of our lives So I can't afford to ignore any emotional truth in my life right now I'm about to make a big move And I need to be in reality and be in truth In therapy we can face the feelings we have avoided and stopped living in a world that no longer exists So what should you be doing right now? What are you avoiding in your life? What feelings are you avoiding? And what world are you living in that no longer exists? What a difficult funeral to hold when we cling to a treasured self image of one who has loved victorious admired or right So pretty much every time I do a live stream After I stop it. I think oh man. I should have said this. I forgot to say this I said something that was wrong inaccurate. I revealed something that I didn't want to reveal So every live stream is like an exercise in imperfection like oh, I shouldn't have gone there I should have said this I should have added this point. I forgot To cite this research study. I forgot to add in this statistic So I have fantasies about doing the perfect live stream When we avoid these painful feelings we suffer the symptoms that result from ignoring the emotional truths of our lives In therapy we can face the feelings. We have avoided and stopped living in a world that no longer exists What a difficult funeral to hold when we cling to a treasured self image of one who has loved victorious admired or right And so Yeah, I've often tried to manipulate people to like me and it's tiring and then why is people don't like being Manipulated right people will resent you for manipulating them So I know quite a few highly manipulative people and they're always trying to you know work the angles Come up with explanations and people resent that people don't like it Even if they don't realize it in the moment or they're not strong enough to resist the manipulation So I'm never going to be universally loved. I'm never going to consistently be victorious I'm never going to have You know universal admiration and I'm not always going to be right all right So these self images are the conceptual clothes that hide who we are So I'm someone who's loved by some people and hated by Perhaps just as many people. I'm someone who is victoria some of the time and a loser just as much I have some people admire me and just as many who despise me. I'm right sometimes and wrong Just as many times So I can drop these self images these conceptual clothes that hide the real me Life pulls these lies out of our hands and we cry as we let go of our delusions But we have one more strategy The clinging to our self image we can treat sadness as a problem to work through and to get over Our grief is not a problem Our grief is a path Hey, buddy. Happy new year to you Our grief is not a problem. Our grief is a path So you lose a marriage you lose a job you lose a friend There's a path to discovering truth When we grieve we surrender to the truth that washes away what is false And just leaves behind what is real We don't get over grief, but we live through grief into a communion with what is Look why sydney of all places la in new york are the places where all the action is with respect as the saying goes If you want to make it something is not sydney. Please explain Well, I'm not 25 anymore. I'm not 35. I am 55. All right. I'm not going to make it All right, I'm not going to make it bigger than I've already made it so New york is a great place for the ambitious Los angeles is a great place for the ambitious the united states is a great place for the ambitious But i'm not the striver that I used to be I just want to enjoy a high quality of life Hang out with my mates make a few videos Read some books Go to synagogue Go to the beach Hang out with friends and family But not the striving young ambitious bloke that I once was so if if my primary Goal right now was my ambition my career Getting famous Becoming influential Achieving power then yeah, I'd want to stay in la But those are not my primary goals now the secondary goals. They're nice. I wouldn't turn down any of those things But they're not primarily about what my life revolves around right now So sydney is an exciting big city like five million people in sydney a lot of great universities in sydney And a lot of mates of mine in sydney Recent ugly truth women have 10 years to command the world and dazzle then egg fertility shrinks to 10% skin sags at age 25 for women Marilyn Monroe was drunken sloppy near the end mid 30s Yeah, so the the brutal truth is that women are much better off if they want to have kids having them in their 20s other than in their 30s that If you haven't conceived by age 35 it starts becoming very very difficult And much of women's power is in their femininity and attractiveness Which peaks around ages 16 to 18 for the typical women So women They're suited for getting married between age 20 and 30 Like men can marry into their 50s You know men 55 year old men like me can still date and marry women in their 20s and 30s Right, so in some ways life is tougher on women than it is on men In other ways life is tougher on men than it is on women So for example, it's not socially acceptable for a man generally speaking to be a house husband most wives were not At ease with their husband staying home and looking after the house and looking after the kids So to be a normal man you have to go out into the world and provide and work You need to make more money than your wife very few women Are content for very long if they are out earning their husbands So in that aspect life is tougher on men than on women. So what was the The saying by god in the book of genesis after adam and eve eat from the forbidden fruit Because you've done this because you've eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil Women will give birth in pain and men will earn a living by the sweat of their brow So from a christian perspective, this is a curse from a jewish perspective. This is just a reality So from a christian perspective the this is the original sin eating the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil From a jewish perspective, this is what is we want knowledge We want to know how the world works even if it makes Life more painful. So Judaism does not hold with original sin It holds with original innocence, but we are born with predispositions predispositions towards goodness and towards cruelty Luke is in his heftiness stage pajamas all day every day Men get into their fifties look around Women get to the end of their twenties Disappear So men certainly pay a price like i'm a bachelor at age 55 that there's a price to be paid for that makes it more difficult for me to have Have kids there's a 55 year old bloke and Life life is better when you have a partner all right back to this terrific book allies we tell ourselves how to face the truth accept yourself and create a better life So we do not get over our grief, but we live through it in a communion with what is In this communion. We need not give up our illusions since the tears wash away our attachment to the fantasies that ward off life So many things start off as adaptive like alcohol can reduce inhibitions help you to socialize better Uh television can make life more exciting and it can provide a distraction Uh fantasies can Help you deal with painful reality But once you start excessively consuming these things Then what begins as adaptive becomes maladaptive? And so if we spend too much time in fantasy we start warding off reality The degree of our suffering equals our distance from reality So we may think we can fool life and fool ourselves by living in fantasy that just increases our suffering Rather than end our suffering by running it toward the truth. We run farther from it through food work alcohol drugs and sex Yeah, so these substance addictions and process addictions are ways of Taking our eye off the ball Ways of you know running away from reality and recovery means accepting reality And when we accept reality then we get serenity. So the prayer goes God grant us the serenity To accept the things we cannot change But it really works the other way around once we accept the things we cannot change What flows from that is serenity So when you have a substance addiction or a process addiction What you're really addicted to is not being here in the present moment, which is the only real home that we have We develop addictions because we don't want to feel what we're feeling We don't want the present. We want to live in an imaginary past or future So if you're consuming porn like you're living in an imaginary world We are hooked on an imaginary experience Of the not me not now that's the universal addiction to get away from ourselves get away from reality Food drugs internet sex fame work booze the tools we use to leave the real world For an imaginary world how we think people ought to be so if you're consistently interacting with with friends You're not going to be after it's going to be very difficult to live in this world of delusion You have to isolate to be able to spend a lot of time in this fantasy world of delusion Running from reality Elaine on Seinfeld's Psychiatrists boyfriend said and she was breaking out with him during a session So yep, it's uh, there'll be shabbas here in about three hours And there's not a synagogue within 300 miles of me so Do you how often do you leave the real world for an imaginary world for how you think things should be and how people should be So if you're getting high in marijuana if you're boozing excessively If you're using pornography You're deliberately trying to stave off reality to spend time in a fantasy world So in fantasies we long for an idealized past or an idealized future which never existed So I've noticed whenever I've moved places. I then spend an inordinate amount of time Writing to people in the places that I've just left Rather than embrace reality rather than embrace the new place I live I'm I'm trying to you know recapture this idealized past these idealized relationships We can't live yesterday today Rather than be present to what is present. We wait for what we wish was present okay, so We all have some very dark fantasies like the dark fantasy just uh written into the chat and uh That that's coming from some some place of uh pain and frustration and anger and hurt that I don't fully understand But I partly understand in that I've had some pretty nasty fantasies myself And it was by articulating these fantasies to a therapist Right because when you talk to a therapist there's client patient confidentiality when you write things on the internet There's not confidentiality But if you'd share these dark thoughts with a therapist Then you could get to the bottom of why you're having these dark thoughts what they really mean what needs their meeting in you And you can get some help Hot women on the scene are gone common lecturer so many women who dominated the covers of magazines have gone fast Women get 10 years they're 20s. They act like they have men's to age 60 attractiveness So women have certain vulnerabilities that men don't have and men have certain vulnerabilities that women don't have For example, it's much more socially acceptable for women to share their feelings And to express their emotions much less socially acceptable for men to do that So men die Earlier than women Okay, good on you Judas good on you for retracting your certain of your messages That's kind of an insane thing to post publicly We imagine that if we lived in a different time or place we would find our inner home of calm rest and contentment Craving the not me not here and not now keeps us homeless Right la has a homeless problem But many people who live in houses also have a homeless problem because they're trying to escape reality We try to escape from this moment by racing it to the next moment But this moment is the only home we have Right now this moment is the only home we have this is a place for you We try to run from our problems the geographic. That's what we call it in 12 steps Someone's got a drinking problem a drugging problem a women problem. They just move So I don't want to be doing a geographic if I move from Los Angeles to Sydney All right, we cannot lift ourselves out of life no matter where we go our shadow follows Everything we run away from inside us always reaches out for our love and our attention It rather than reach out to what reaches out to us. We race away We refuse to sit in to rest in and be transformed by our feelings. So what are you running away from? What is reaching out to you from inside that you're running from? so That's why I like to spend a lot of time journaling to try to uncover what's underneath the surface Try to get to what is true to try to shed light on my thinking process We are addicted to not bearing what we feel to not being who we are We are stoned on imaginary cells imaginary others Our fantasies of what other people are like and imaginary states of mind. These are the real drugs That's so good All right, many people are stoned on marijuana and drugs and alcohol But many more They're stoned on imaginary selves Like these grandiose conceptions they have of themselves Imaginary conceptions of other people imaginary states of mind So what are our defenses defenses of the lies we tell ourselves To avoid pain So many people don't want to give up on their fantasies. They'd rather give up on life We try to cling to our illusions by asking other people to change for us into our favorite fantasies Rather than coming home and facing painful truths We try to get rid of them Healing occurs when we love our depths no matter how messy and pathological Remember the joke what is psychotherapy? It's when a big mess meets a littler mess Our roar vulnerability to life never goes away When you love people you're vulnerable I mean look at Jim Bowden. I met Jim Bowden. He can no longer troll me Because he's had a fair dinkum experience of the real me. I'm no longer just an object talking on youtube Our roar vulnerability to life never goes away We doom ourselves when we refuse to face our humanity Our flaws are the mirrors in which we see ourselves We long for a world where everybody gets long and the lion and the lamb lie down together It's a beautiful story But what happens when life shows up instead? You become angry. Wow, my preferences did not happen We want to live in an imaginary world rather than the real world We yearn for spouses who want what we want. We yearn for friends who agree with us We yearn for colleagues who follow our directions Don't be who you are be who I want you to be We compare what happens with what we think should be happening and we try to escape into our fantasies We don't want conflict because conflict Destroys our fantasies We try to reject those parts of reality that do not fit with what we want When we decide what we will accept and dismiss the rest we sentence part of ourselves to death row We try to sanitize ourselves to appear pure This is hatred of life when we try to transcend life where you reject life To aim for zero negativity You must reject the negative in ourselves if you love something you're going to hate that which threatens them Love and hate part of the same continuum So a priest confided yourself hatred to this therapist Therapist said according to your theology god made you in god's image. Is that right from your point of view does god love you? He nodded since god made you in his image and god loves you wouldn't it make sense to join him by loving yourself? Right be a good friend to yourself So why do we tell ourselves lies because it's more comfortable? So how do we deceive ourselves? How do we distort reality? Or we blame other people You forced me People create conflicts within ourselves and we blame them So many many psychotherapists also refuse to embrace reality Some of them suffer from an allergy to misplace empathy so when the therapist says To a patient describing a difficult situation that must have been hard for you This is psychotherapy. It's like a form of pseudo empathy. That must have been really hard for you So as therapists and as friends we should empathize with people but not with the behaviors that destroy their lives Bye. Bye