Masochism & The First Lie: Why We Punish Ourselves with Dr. Loren Weiner

Transcript auto-generated from the episode audio; formatting has been cleaned up, but wording is verbatim.

Hello, I'm Cynthia Marks and I head up the Holistic Psychoanalysis Foundation established by my late husband, Doctor Bernard Bail. Welcome to And Now Love. Doctor Loren Weiner is here today. Always a treat. And we are going to talk about masochism. Right. That's what. We're doing. So first off. Hello. Of course. What is masochism. This is a very well known psychoanalytic concept. I think many people are also just generally familiar with the idea, but it is a character trait where people carry unconscious guilt and then live their lives trying to assuage that unconscious guilt by self-sabotaging self punishment or denying themselves good things, and that there is a feeling, unconsciously, that the person deserves some type of suffering or punishment because of this guilt, and the guilt is usually very undefined, meaning it isn't traceable to one thing, but it is more of a false self-concept that the person somehow deserves some of the punishment or in some way to not have something good.

Can you give us kind of a real life example of how that would present itself? Yeah. So some people might do something really simple that we all know, which is procrastinate. Now, there may be many reasons that isn't always masochism, but one of the things that often does is makes it so that the person can't do their best job. I don't deserve to turn in my best homework assignment or report for my job, so I will procrastinate and then, oh, see, I couldn't do the best thing and I'm punished. In a sense. I've self sabotaged. I've kept myself from being the best I can be, but it's all stemming from this unconscious guilt.

Right. So the person really believes deep inside, I've done something and I don't deserve the best. So it's more than there is just some unconscious satisfaction in being dissatisfied. It's bigger than that. It's. It's it's as if you know no other way. You're kind of innately going that way, because this is how it's been since the beginning for you. Yes. I assume that the origins of this are very early, meaning most people have this style style of relating to themselves in the world, and that starts very early. Bail would go back and say that this starts at the very beginning, and his understanding is a little different than some of the other theories.

Freud talked about this, that it's not just getting a pleasure. And now all of this unconscious. I want to say that because most of the time people aren't walking around saying, oh, I have to be punished. You know? It's just that they keep finding themselves in these predicament. Yes. They keep self-sabotaging themselves, you know, there. You know another example, right? You're supposed to complete a project and at the last minute you accidentally, you know, have some disaster happen where you've dropped your computer and, you know, a car ran over it.

Okay. We would say what you know, obviously something's at work there. What is it? Well, there may be an unconscious feeling that, you know, this report was going to be great. I'm not allowed to turn it in. Or if I'm going to, it has to be so painful, so difficult that now I'm going to now have to stay up all night redoing this work and where it should have just been like you'd get to do it and you get to turn it in and that's it. So we now these are little ways in which we see masochism. And again, because it's a continuum, you know, you may see it in in large ways as well.

Back to your question. His idea differs from other theorists in that he says this actually starts at the very beginning. His idea is that the guilt really arises from the moment the fetus receives an imprint from the mother. Now I go to the mother. Not that it doesn't happen later with the father, but it's later. So the origin know dyad, the mother and the fetus when that imprint. So again, this is unconscious. The imprint is a delivery of all of the unprocessed, negative feelings a mother carries about herself, all of her problems, all of the ways she feels she's not good enough.

When that is delivered to the fetus, and the fetus, in essence takes this and says, okay, mom, you are suffering, I will take this. Now the problem is many, but in terms of masochism is that if mom is that upset, the fetus assumes it's my fault. So it's not just the fetus is splitting its own mind and taking all of this mother's pain and trauma in. Additionally, that fetus thinks this is my fault. Bail called this the first lie that his idea was. We then start from a guilty place. Oh my God, I caused this. I am somehow bad. I must not only take it, but live with this guilt that I must have been the root cause for all your suffering.

It is because of the mother's imprint that we get to the place of living our lives in this. Guilt. Way. Masochism. That's right. That that. Then that guilt sits. Then what do we do with the guilt? And we may have to assuage it in some way. How much guilt we feel. And this is part of the reason I think the guilt is often not defined because it is such an early unconscious origin. So we're all walking around with some of this guilt. And again, a continuum depends how much trouble. How much pain was your mother in and how much did you feel responsible.

And if that starts at the root for all of us, then you can imagine we carry this not only into our own lives, but we carry it into every system, every relationship, and every system. We make, you know? So we're always rubbing off on everybody else around us. And, yes, and building our societies with this embedded in it. And if we're all rolling through life with this sort of same root, it just kind of perpetuates. Yes. And if it's all unconscious and then it's never touched, we just keep living that way. So you just somewhere deserve to be punished for something.

And that is relieving in a certain way or pleasurable because you know you are guilty. So of course I deserve this. And then there's something satisfying about that, because that's the world, you know, and you kind of train yourself to stay within these parameters. I don't deserve that. I can't go there because that'll upset my mother, who is now more than just your mother. It's, you know, sort of every authority out there, right? It becomes global so that, yes, that's what happens. And, you know, this is because we're human and it happens at the time of receiving the imprint.

It is very closely related to it. But you add that piece of and it's my fault. So it's not just some prohibition, meaning you're not to have love in your life. You're not to be a success. You're to have a tough go, which may be some of the imprints people are familiar with. This really adds a piece. That is, and it's your fault, and it's your fault. You originally caused your mother all of this trouble. It's your fault. And as you said, it's the original lie. But in our lives we're like, oh yeah, I get that. It's my fault. So of course this is where I am.

It's my fault and all unconscious. So we have to all look at ourselves and say, okay, where are we masochistic, where do we punish ourselves? Self-sabotage. And later theorists added that you will deny yourself pleasure in other ways. So it's not necessarily only punishment. But maybe I'm just not entitled to good things or if there's something good happening in my life, I may start to feel too guilty. And then I either have to undo it or stop being a part of whatever that is, because there's no way I get all of that good experience sense. I'm too guilty.

I don't deserve that. And then there's the other idea about guilt in that at some moments we feel a little uncomfortable because we did something that we know was maybe not in the best interest of someone we care about. That's a whole different thing. Is that right? It's yes. There's a lot to talk about in terms of guilt, and some of that is appropriate guilt. That's a more mature place where you can then make reparations. I mean, potentially, if you understand it, you know, in yourself, you can you can say, oh, I did something. I don't feel comfortable with, right.

That and a lot of that is more conscious. Right. We know we did something. This is truly so early and so un conscious because when we receive that imprint we split that off and that we deny this in our own minds. We split our own minds unconsciously, so we don't have to feel that pain of receiving the imprint ever again. The problem is, once you've walled something off, you don't know it's there, so you don't have anything to connect it to. We're just completely unaware that all of this has gone on. When we're walling this thing off, we're are we walling off the mother's imprint to protect it?

Or are we walling off our true self? Because that shouldn't bubble to the surface, because we have to be so busy taking care of our mother's feelings. I think what we're walling off is the pain associated with receiving this imprint. This package of negative feelings doesn't come in a benign way. It comes with a, you know, kind of a slam. This is incredibly toxic, incredibly painful to the psyche. We don't want to feel that again. It's awful. So we actually wall it off to protect ourselves from ever feeling that again. Now what it also does is it keeps us separated from our true selves.

It keeps us holding all of mom's pain in a an imaginary way. Really, we are imagining that fixed mom. But the walling off is primarily to never feel that pain again later. Does it keep us from being our true selves? Yes it does. Once we've taken in something like that, that is another person's. We are now also part that other person. We are no longer just ourselves. In a way, when we when we come into this world first and in utero, we are in sort of this, angelic space, let's say, for lack of a better word, where there is no pain, there is no questioning about who we are.

We're just in this sort of peaceful zone. And then this imprint is delivered to us, and that hurts like hell. It's like, whoa, did you ever just disturb what I thought was my existence? I mean, that's all unconscious. We all are in in utero. And. And you think I don't like that? I don't like that. And so you separate yourself from the pain? Yes. You go. You know, it's sort of like somebody detonating a nuclear bomb in your mind, and you go, okay, well, that almost killed me. I don't ever want to touch that again. So here are my new circumstances.

Push it away, wall it off, and we see this in dreams where I know you and I have talked about this before, but I'll repeat it because you see, people in dreams, people will have a baseball bat. Somebody will come up from behind them and attack them with a baseball bat. They take a huge blow to the head off, and you will have patients have dreams where they are shot in the head or a ball comes, you know, at an exceedingly high speed and hits them in the head and they fall backwards, or they, jump off of something high and crack the head. So you actually start to, you know, if you listen long enough to everybody, you start to see these types of things repeat and they're all telling you something, you know, after you explore them about how painful it is to receive an imprint.

And most of these, I think, are even underplaying the level of pain. With enough work in this sort of therapy that you're doing most people get to the place where they have a dream like that, and for you, it's probably not shocking. You're like, well, yeah, I mean, we're basically pretty much everybody has had that experience in utero. Yes, yes. So at some point you typically get some dreams that will talk about this. It's a very interesting area because there are all kinds of dreams that tell us about these very early experiences and how people are both how they receive this imprint and how painful it is.

And also you can start to see people will all of a sudden the thinking gets very fuzzy and they thought they parked over here and they can't get back to the car. And the street is different. And but I knew when I walked over there it looked exactly like that. And now I'm completely lost. And so you start to see where these shifts happen after an imprint also right of where it gets the person off their center, what will happen is you start to see the enormous confusion after an imprint as well, so we can start to follow and say, all right, this is what it does to the mind, all unconscious.

So you may look at this lovely little baby that's born as, oh, great. And everything looks perfect. And hits all its numbers and, and everything is fine. It just doesn't mean there hasn't been internal psychic damage. And that's. And it's all unconscious and we're all walking around with it more or less. You know, some people are lucky and they have very mild imprints for most of us, that's not the case. And we've taken a real blow. And it's changed us, fundamentally changed us, and we never want to know about it again. So the work of an analysis, I think, is really to get you back to the earliest times, to start to say, well, you're going to have to revisit that enormous pain.

Hopefully it's not going to feel exactly like that because we can analyze it and you can use your adult self now to understand it in your dreams, to talk about it. But it is really going back to touch that pain so that you can try to pull as much of that imprint off of yourself as possible. So there you are. You can find yourself. Yes, but unlike an imprint which isn't necessarily defined by guilt, the masochism piece where you received it and thought, oh my God, if she's carrying my mother is carrying this much pain, it's my fault. That is a defining characteristic of that.

What do we do about that? Analyze it like we do with everything else. Watch your dreams. A lot of dreams will show the masochistic peace. It may or may not be the focal point of that session or that dream, but at some point you're going to be analyzing that. You're going to be looking to say, okay, look at all of this suffering. And if you can, you're distinguishing it from just an imprint. But, you know, again, these are all it's not like a surgical separation within the mind. These bleed into each other. Of course. I see it's not like a step by step process like you figure out how to undo the masochism.

And that leads you to the next thing. To the. Next. That's right. The message. Is. Going to be woven into everything. And that's the idea with certain people you'll see just a little of this. Other people, it is just an enduring way of being in the world. You know, you can see it in almost everything. They're describing. There's just this tremendous need to be punished for this guilt that is felt. But if you think about society now, what you just said just applies so blatantly. Yes. I mean, that is one of the reasons I wanted to talk about it.

I think if we can imagine, okay, we are all carrying some type of masochism. There are ways in which we may punish ourselves. We may just generally feel guilty. We're bad. We don't deserve good things. We will make choices in our life that don't let us have good things now. Okay, put 500 of us in a room and we're all doing that now. Put a million, now put 20 million. Right, and we're all walking around more or less with this feeling. Well, what are we going to create? How good can our systems, our societies, be if we all somewhere feel too guilty to have it too good?

We're going to, you know, bring in role in the austerity measures, right. Oh, life was getting too good. We can't have that. Something will have to go wrong. We have to undo it. We have to sabotage ourselves. Better start another war. Better do something to ensure we suffer. Cut back on those women's rights. Yes. There are so many ways. As many as you can imagine, that we can begin to say, oh, well, we better suffer, we better suffer. And the problem is this first lie, this idea that you are responsible for your mother's pain and therefore should be guilty and then have to punish yourself, sits under all of our systems.

And it's a lie. It is not true. That is not why your mother was upset. Your mother was upset because she lived her own life, and things went more or less well for her. And she had her own parents. And we can follow it back generationally to why people are upset, why they have imprints, and what the imprints look like. But it certainly is not that woman's child's fault. Not ever. Not ever. Not ever. And is that idea of this original lie? If we don't really address it, is it growing generation after generation? I think it does. I think the imprints, all of it grows, and we want to start getting at it so it doesn't bleed into our genetics so that it doesn't jump in and cover everything.

Yes, we we want to slow it down, become aware of it and start going, okay everybody, we have been so focused on the external, but look what's going on right inside of us. And this is the most powerful place because all of our ideas, all of the things we are going to enact out in the world start inside. And if we don't occupy ourselves with what is inside, how we work, what's happening and how we make all of our choices and decisions, we cannot change things once it's left us, you know, it's too it's too big, it's too powerful. Once the systems are all out there in the world to fix it externally.

People may be tired of me saying that, but. But it truly is something where if you don't get at everybody's guilt and so you're guilty. You may have done things later in life, but certainly at the very beginning you didn't do anything and you're walking around with a lie in your mind that is causing you to do all kinds of behaviors that aren't good for you, aren't going to support you. And then we build all of our systems off of that. So how can you fix it out there if you don't address it inside? It'll just it either. You might change it a little bit, but it'll come back.

So you can say, all right, we built this amazing place and we have all these good things. Eventually all of the people will come and sit, but we all feel too guilty. We can't have something good. So what do we want? Okay, start a war. Okay. Tear it down. Okay. Use the money for something else. Don't feed the people. Don't house the people. Don't give them medical care. And we all say, oh, okay. Yes, we understand that. Of course we. Yes, yes, that makes sense. We can rationalize where all this, you know, spend the money on something else. And of course, we the people will suffer.

But where did we get that? Well, we got that at the very beginning and we just substitute it. All the politicians or leaders or kings, whatever you want for our parents, the original authority figure. So we all on some level have the ability to address this. Obviously we all can't see someone like you who's trained to help us with this, but if we hear what you're saying and start to think about it, okay, maybe what? Let me just think about what Loren saying. Let me look at the world outside. What's happening inside, and we just begin to acknowledge it and apply it and feel it.

Will that help us get to a place where we're thinking a that wait a minute. As an individual, I have some power to change what's happening outside. If I can figure out what I was before I had this bomb of an imprint hit me because that person me was only meant to be coming from a loving place. Yes, anything helps. So all of the places, you know, if we start with masochism, because we're talking about that today, you can start to look at yourself and go, where do I make myself suffer? Where did I not get that work done quickly enough so that I had to be all upset and I couldn't enjoy it?

And then I couldn't go to the party because I needed to get something done. You know, little places where it just happens to work its way in. And what did that feel like? Why did I go there? Why did I do it? Yeah. You know, people always say, why do I procrastinate? Yeah. You know, okay, well, here's a thought, right? It may be because somewhere in the deepest recesses of your mind, you're carrying guilt. And Bale was say, here's the guilt. Now, that doesn't mean because you know, other theorists talk about this, and there are ways our families give us these messages.

You're only given emotional rewards if you are self-sacrificing, if you deny your own feelings, if you suffer this gets built into families as well. And then the family culture reaffirms it. And then you go out in the world and say, okay, yeah, I'm only lovable if I'm suffering. And then unconsciously that suffering becomes some form of satisfaction or pleasure. I deserve it. Yes. Pleasurable and maybe not in the way we normally think about it, but pleasurable in that it assuage is the guilt. Okay. I rest. I can rest because, you know, it was just, boy, life was getting too good.

I had to throw a wrench into it because I don't really deserve that. Because that means then you you are not protecting your mother anymore. Because you've trained yourself to do X, Y, and Z, because you're so guilty that your mom was upset. And if you undo that, if you step out of that, you're you're not helping your mom. Well, potentially understanding the guilt doesn't quite undo an imprint, right? Because the imprint was where you were really helping your mom. Then you were guilty because of it, because you assumed you caused it, right? Yes.

We have a problem there, which is if you start to say, what if I'm not guilty? Right? Then what we're really looking at is, oh my gosh, my mother is not the idealized figure I thought she was. Maybe she came damaged. Whoa. Right. So we're disrupting these very early concepts that fetal life in early childhood is concerned with in terms of I need this caretaker who's in charge of my life to hopefully be perfect because that means I will survive if I hold all of her trouble. I will survive. This is very important in terms of just basic human survival.

So we are not so different from other animals in the jungle. We have to survive. We just do this all unconsciously inside. We jump through all of these, you know, hoops and twists and turns and turn ourselves into pretzels, trying to manage all of this emotional damage. You can see it in dreams that human beings do it. And actually, maybe this is a good time because you were kind enough to volunteer to of your own dreams. Yeah. So that we could share with people just to to give an idea of how dreams might talk about masochism. Now, sometimes, as I said, it's not the main focus, but the dream is riddled with it and you'll see it.

And sometimes you're going to interpret that and sometimes you you may or may not, depending on the content of the dream, it may not be the most salient piece in that session. But often you're going to see it and you know that you will circle back around and get to it. Because more dreams will continue to lead you there. Absolutely. Okay, then. All right. In my dream, there is a man who just finished writing a book. I'm not actually part of the dream. I'm watching the dream. He seemed to be in his early 40s. He has dark hair, wears a white dress shirt and black slacks.

He is a psychologist or a psychoanalyst or something similar. His book has a white book jacket with a title written out in fairly bold capital letters says life is torture. I wonder if people will want to read this book with such a miserable title. If we were really working, I would let you start to tell me about what comes to your mind. What does it make you think of? What were your feelings in the dream? Who is this man? What do you imagine? Tell me about the title. All of this. We're not going to do that here today, but I think people can get the flavor.

Oh my gosh. Oh, here's the book. Life is torture. So it gives us a sense of your feelings at that time that you were trying to talk about and say, you know, here's a piece of it. Oh my gosh, it's going to be so hard. I mean, we could we could question, right? Is this the book of life or the the manual for how it goes? And this was a dream of a few years ago. And I can think back to those times when I was pretty fearful of undoing everything I thought was a known entity about my life. Like, no, these are my parents. This is everything's just wonderful.

These are my relationships. Everything's great. And I was afraid to deal with the truth of myself. It was it was scary and vast and unknown could possibly put me in a place. It was way worse than this other place that I had molded for myself. Yeah. So you say in the dream, right? Who's going to read that book? Yeah. You know, which is a way of saying it's resistance. Right. You know. Oh my gosh, who I don't want to read this book. And nobody else does either. I'm not alone in this. Right. Everybody's on my side. See who why would you do that? Why would you do it?

I don't even want to read this book at all. I don't want to look at it, but it is letting us see. But here is what I have felt life was to be torture. This may touch on an imprint. This may, you know, depending on what was going on in your life at that moment, what the stimulus was for this particular dream. We'd want to be thinking about all of that, but it also gives us a sense that how is this person going to be living his or her life, your life? If life is to be torture, you're going to have to find a lot of things that make it torture. That is a piece where we see the masochism come in now.

I expect we would see it in a lot of places, because if life is to be torture, we're not going to see a lot of fun. We're not going to see a lot of things that feel great being allowed in right away. Those might be pushed aside. And it does feel like that very thick, serious book was the book of my life. That was it. That's the story. Here's the story. Don't make me look at it. Thank you. Okay, I don't remember much about this dream. I've been somewhere and I am now leaving with my dad in his vehicle. As we are leaving, I realize that I've left my purse and a small overnight bag at the place I had been at.

We are driving away and I am afraid to tell my dad this because I don't want to upset him or cause a delay for him. I struggle in my head and try to rationalize that maybe I don't need the items left behind, or that this is a really good lesson for me, and I'll feel it by not getting my things back. So the masochism in this one is right there as well. This is a good lesson for me. I deserve this. And it's going to hurt. It's going to hurt and I'll feel it. I'll feel it. And I deserve to not get my things back. Now this dream has a lot in it. And again, if we were really working on this dream, I would let you just start to tell me about all the elements in the dream.

Where are you? You give us a big story, which is a I lose myself, I have to leave this behind and I'm scared to make any attempt to get it back. You know, this is a very common experience for people. These types of dreams come all the time and long periods of time where you are working on this. Oh, I did, I lost part of myself. I lost the keys to my car. I misplaced my car. I thought I parked it over there, I parked it there. I lost my suitcase. I lost my purse, my briefcase, my wallet, my cell phone. So many ways people use to describe losing themselves, not being allowed to be their fullest self in some way, shape or form.

Like in my dream. There was rationalization on some level. Well, you know, you really don't deserve that or you deserve it. You lost it. That's right. And that's a masochism piece. I deserve it somehow. Why do you deserve it? What did you do that really warrants? You shouldn't have your full self. For most of us, nothing. You know. And because we're you're dreaming it. Now as an adult, you're telling me this. But that is probably something that happened not recently, a long, long time ago. So what do little kids what do in fetus infant children do that would warrant them not getting full access to their whole self?

Nothing nothing. Nothing. And and as adults with the ability to consider this what you've just said and you think about our children in the world and you think about putting this on them unconsciously, consciously, whatever it is, if you have feelings about that, it is crushing. It's it's it's why would you want anyone to live like that? And you think about these little ones who unconscious mostly are walking through starting life like this. It's a tragedy. For the whole world, you know, every every child that doesn't get to be his or her true self.

We all feel. We all feel the pain. I think we have this idea that you're separate. We all feel it. Every war, we all feel it. You have to be careful with your children. You know, sometimes we slip and say things and that wasn't nice. That just wasn't nice. You have to go apologize because that child felt it. And some kids only get a few of those experiences. Some kids get too many of those experiences. Well, what are you teaching? You're teaching a child again to be masochistic. Something's wrong with you. You made Mom and Dad angry. You're bad.

All right, well, if I'm bad, you beat me. I'm bad. Guess what? I have to go live as a bad person. Bad people don't deserve good things. We get enough of that in our society. We can't have good things because the unconscious will won't allow it again. We all have to help to treat each other better, give each other things. You know this idea that, oh, you know, you're not entitled to health care? What kind of craziness is this when you really think about it? Why? I mean, it's so much easier to say you are entitled to health care, right? I mean, isn't that I mean, that's just.

And food and education and human rights basic should be basic. But we as a group have decided that some people get to be in charge of deciding that. And others we just take it and we say, oh, oh, there must be a very good reason that we are not entitled to that. It's expensive. Oh, but we have trillions of dollars to go spend on wars. And trillions of dollars held exclusively by very few people on the planet. We have that too. So we have all manner of ways in which we can reenact the, You are the mother. I am the bad child, I am guilty, so I deserve all bad treatment.

And you are idealized. If you have money, you must be the most powerful but perfect mother also. So we won't make you have to change anything. We will suffer for you. And is there more and more of this running through our communal unconscious? I would say there certainly is enough of it. There's enough of it. That's we've just been living with for as long as we've been doing this, but we don't need to. I think the point is we don't need to. This can be a time where people feel like everything is spinning out of control or falling apart or, you know, and look, this isn't Partizan.

Ask anybody on either side. You know, people have are having similar experiences, but we don't need to. We don't need to, but we have to change everything we're doing. And it's not working because nobody's happy anyway. So we have to change everything we're doing, which is to say this can now be a time where we all turn inward and start to look at ourselves, start to understand that we are much deeper, that we have an unconscious, we are much deeper than anybody imagined, and we are all connected this way. And we don't have to start from a place of guilt as though we deserve bad things.

We don't have to live with imprints that then compound all of this. We don't have to live with any of it. We are actually supposed to have good lives and we have to work to get there. And we do that by starting inside. Each person has to see where are you held back within yourself because that's what you bring to the group. So it is self-serving, of course, but the only way we can truly, honestly. Be. There is to get to our authentic self where we can actually act from a good, honest, loving place. Right? We have to decide we are entitled to love, but if we're too guilty, we're bad.

We don't get love. Okay, you know, that's one of the nice things that that people may say, oh, well, I may not punish myself completely, but I'm certainly not entitled to something as pleasurable as love. Well, okay. But that means we are bringing that mindset to the group and you get enough people with that mindset. Then you can't have a government that acts loving towards loving lead towards the people. All of this, yes, people often will sell, but it's so selfish to just focus on yourself. But we have to. You have to do it. You have to really understand yourself and how you work, and that you know that you have an unconscious, a part of you that you're completely unaware of.

But that is actually what drives everything you do. And that lets you then if you can work on yourself and understand that, you can be a better group member. So there is a selfish piece, but a healthy, selfish piece, and then you give to the collective. And I think too, if you can start to think about this, if you find moments where you have a glimmer, that thing that I just experienced there, that was some kind of love and happiness, maybe that's different than what I feel over here in my little arena, and I don't even know what that is or how you get there.

But if you if you see it and feel it, if you can really remark on that and, and give yourself opportunities to grow that feeling that I think could help you understand that there's so much more to you than what you think there is, and that there is another way of being that is healthier, happier, more satisfying, more helpful to your community, to humanity. I mean, we're all only here because we're parts and pieces of the same thing, right? Well, and I'll go back to your dream. Part of the dilemma is we're all carrying a book that says life is torture and that's the operating manual.

Right? Okay. I'm in. What else is. There? How do you get a glimpse? Right. If that's the operating manual, you have to. As you said, I think you have to keep an eye out. Are there any experiences that don't validate that? That's the operating manual that don't support that idea? Well, for some people, the way that locks into the lens, you see everything where it's too strong, it's it's too solid. So you don't even say, oh, well, you know, I had that other experience and that that tells me something new. Maybe you do. And if so, yes, grab that.

No, it's possible, but I think people also have to start knowing we are all in some way, shape or form carrying that book. We all just believe the human condition is to suffer and it just isn't. I remember as a young teenager going over to a friend's house, kind of a new friend, but I was really impressed with her. She's just happy go lucky kid. I went and her whole family was there. She had a big family. I had a little tiny family and they were talking and arguing and rolling their eyes and touching each other, and they laughed. They'd be happy and mad and happy.

And it was so curious to me. And I remember riding my bike home and thinking, what is wrong with them? And I'm sure they had their issues like the rest of us, but they were showing each other some amount of love that was ailing into me, and it didn't fit into my picture. I think that happens to kids a lot. They have a family culture. You grow up, you get a little older and start going over to your friends houses and suddenly, if your mind will allow it, you get to see that it's different. And sometimes that's good because it completely opens it.

Sometimes the mind will go, oh no, that's a problem. It's different. I recognize it's different, but we'll have to judge that is completely unacceptable. Or what is. Wrong with them? Yeah, right. Yeah. And sometimes it also makes kids go what's wrong with my family? What is wrong with us that we don't do x, y, z? Why don't we hug like that? Why don't we sit on the couch together and watch a movie? What? Whatever it. Is. But that's a good thing. It's a very good thing that intrudes on life is miserable or torture. Life is torture. It intrudes. So we're looking for things, hopefully in the positive way that intrude upon us and make you have to reassess everything you thought was true about the world, yourself and others.

And I think for me, when I was doing that and looking in this kind of family situation full of depth and, and love, and I still had to go back and live with my family, that was not like that at all. I had to make it okay. So I had to make everything, make there be something wrong with what they were doing. And we do this all the time. Yeah, either either it gets to shatter the ideas or it's too dangerous to threatening. And then we pick it apart. Here are all the reasons that's not good. But they were angry. But they were yelling. But they were.

Whatever it is. Right? And we can say, oh, see, I don't have to now. Yeah, I don't, I don't have to feel upset that I don't. Have that right. It's kind of a heartbreak. It's a it's a big heartbreak if you really feel it. I think all of these are what we're looking for in ourselves are where where do you not let yourself have a happy life? And that may be an imprint. And if it's guilt and God, I just don't feel I really deserve something good to happen. And I keep sabotaging myself and I keep on doing anything good. And if there's two choices, I will pick the one that makes sure that I suffer.

Then you can see where the masochism is also driving things. And do you have any other little insights into how we people, without access to people like you, can begin to feel or think about this? I think the first thing is just knowing this exists, that we have an unconscious and it's beautiful, you know, when whether you have someone to talk to or not, every night when you go to sleep, you have a chance to have, I mean, at least one dream. You may have many and you may remember it, and at least you can start to be curious about yourself. This is not just fragging the hard drive.

This is not just a biological reordering of stressors from the day. This is really a communication from the highest part of myself. And if I can at least honor that and know that I am capable of that and start to be curious, at least you may not have the help of somebody who can go through it all with you and understand. But at least instead of going that way, not knowing any of that is true, you can start to at least go towards this idea that yes, we are much more than that. We have all of this potential inside of us and it isn't external. I mean, the external world is amazing, but it's also incredibly distracting.

We can all get busy with the latest technological advantage or political news or whatever it is. Go inside. You want really high tech. How about our ability to communicate incredibly deep emotional ideas that are the bedrock for how we live our lives in a dream every single night? That's huge. I think you can start to shift how you view us and where we are going and what needs to happen. Because even someone like me, who has a dream where I'm reading the title of a book called Life Is Torture, if anybody has that dream, I mean, that's that's pretty loaded.

That gives you a lot to think about. That's right. Why am I dreaming about this? Oh my gosh. Right. And you can say, oh well see I don't like it because I think nobody would want to read that book. But we have to know ourselves a bit and say, okay, well, typically if I take the time in the effort to make that the main focus of a dream, then it isn't because I don't need to know about that book. It's that I really need to know about it. And even if part of me is saying, don't make me read it, it's who's going to read that? It's an awful title, and I'm sure there is a part of you that says, I'm.

I don't torture myself every minute. There's another part that says, but this is the book I'm living from. I read this every night. I'm a I'm a good girl. I read my book, and my book is life is torture. And that's all I know. I don't. Question it. This is what I'm to do. And now we're saying, well, question, start questioning, start questioning everything. Why is it this way? Why is that that way? Why do I put up with this? Why do I do that to myself? Yeah. Great question. Why? I say just give it a try. Just start asking these questions of yourself and think about the feelings related to the statements.

So that's a place to at least start. I learned so much. It's it's huge. And to understand how masochism is sort of layered on top of our imprint. Yes. And and it really finds its way. It's not just our lives, but we are bringing this to everything we set up as humans. And we're all doing it or doing the same. Thing. That's right. This isn't one where you can say, oh, but see, those people do it, the other does it, not me. No. We are all as human beings doing this. And it is say this all comes from the original experience of receiving an imprint and then feeling, and it's my fault she was upset and it's my fault.

Now. We do this again later with our fathers, but I'm starting where the fetus starts inside of the mother, and this is the original blow. That doesn't mean later we aren't very occupied with our fathers or other people in our family. We are anybody who's taking care of us. That could be, you know, two moms, two dads, whomever it is, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents. Doesn't matter. We will take all of them in and also feel some guilt around it. But that is because the template is set, set down in the original dyad and then we just live it out.

We are the little babies, and anybody who's in charge of us is the idealized parent. And we take the suffering. You know, there are many more of us who are not billionaires than those that are. There are many more of us who are not the politicians in charge than those who are. And we take. It and we do. It's normalized. We take it, and we have to. And they tell us, well, we can't do this or that, and we say, oh, we understand that we would really like it, but we understand that that's not possible right now. Well, wait a minute. Hold on a minute.

But you work for us, but you work for us. We want this. You can't say no. Figure out how to do it or give the job to someone else. But we don't ask that of people. We say, oh, you can't do it. We understand. Right? So this is a problem because we're all living in this masochistic way. So I have to suffer. Yeah, I just I don't deserve the best and deserve the best life. So you're going to help me suffer and. You'll help me. I'll keep you. You tell me you can't do it. Great. I'll elect you to office 50 times. I will keep voting for you. So it's everywhere.

But we can all take a sigh of relief or feel a little refreshed, knowing that the most important thing you can do is to go inward, really, and find your own loving operating system. And you can do something. Yes. And if you can shift that in yourself, you may vote for somebody different. You may influence your neighbors or your larger group around you, even if you're just shifting the feeling I'm no longer going to live that way. Why do you want to live that way? How about we get someone in office that wants to give us something good and feels I can do it.

Instead we say, oh no, you know how the system is. Nobody can really change anything. Well, yes. If we continue to hold on to all of this and and just keep our book with our operating system. Life is torture. All right. Oh, yeah, of course it is. I won't ask for any. I'm in the right place. That's it. Thank you. Thank you so much. Super interesting. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us. And we'll look forward to seeing you next time. Stay with us and pay attention to us on your favorite social media site. And.