TRANSCRIPT
I sometimes think, what is the most unique thing that I have discovered? I spent four years of university studying biology. The goal of biologists is to maybe find a new species, make a breakthrough in science in some way. I never really found any breakthroughs. I never discovered anything really unique. But the unique thing that I believe that I have found in my life, the thing that really I think makes me the most different from anyone I know, is how much I’ve learned about breaking from the family system. An individual who breaks from the family system and what that really means and what value that has.
I remember there were a couple lines in my book, Breaking from Your Parents, that I really tormented over. I wondered if I should keep them in or take them out. In a way, they’re the lines that are the most difficult for me to have published. Yes, I talked a lot about my family and very personal stuff and perverse things about my parents and horrible things in my own history. That was difficult. But these lines that I’m going to talk about were the most difficult thing to say, to make public, to stand behind in a way. And that is the idea that I think at a fundamental level it would be great for humanity if everyone, every individual, broke from their family of origin. Really, really got out of their family.
The reason I think this is unique is because, well, first, who else says this? I think even people who talk about breaking from the family of origin, mostly books that talk about it, they mostly say if your family is really, really screwed up in the most extreme way, then you have a right, maybe even something of a responsibility, to get away from them. Or if one of your parents is horrible, you have a right to set boundaries and get away from him or her and never talk to him or her again. But who says, I think it’s a good idea that everybody should break from their family of origin? And why do I say that? Why do I think it’s a good idea that everyone should break from their family of origin? Because that seems like a really ludicrous kind of thing to say.
Well, part of it is that from what I have observed, everybody is traumatized in their family of origin. Everybody. That’s also a risky thing to say. Maybe that’s unique that I feel this, have observed this, come to hold that as truth. I think a big part of it is that most people don’t even know really what trauma is. And I think a big part of it is that they don’t really empathize with babies. They don’t really empathize with children. They don’t realize how much torment the average baby and child goes through in his or her family of origin. I think they just look the other way. They haven’t dealt with on any remote level the comparable amounts of trauma that they went through in their own early, early childhood history, such that they are emotionally numb to the feelings of others who are going through comparable things. They really don’t, on an emotional level, relate to babies or very young children.
And so when babies and very young children go through torment, torment that is trauma, torment that is post-traumatic, most people, 99% of the world, just considers this normal. This is what children go through. This is even good for them. This is for their own good. This is making them strong. They need to go through this to learn how to be strong. Or they have to go through this because it’s too much work for their parents. You can’t expect parents to give them x, y, and z. Or they even do that little psychological twisting thing that so much of the psychology field does, which is if parents gave their young children or their babies too much love, too much attention, too much caring, it would screw them up. It would make them narcissistic. It would spoil them. So actually, the parents have to reject their children. That is good boundaries. That is healthy parenting. Basically, it lets the parents off the hook for being more complete, more healthy parents.
Another thing that society says over and over again is, well, those parents are doing the best they could. What can you expect? Whereas I say those people shouldn’t have had children in the first place. They were not remotely ready to have children. They should have healed their own traumas. So all these things are pretty different from pretty much anybody I know. And why do I talk about this publicly? I ask myself that sometimes. I’m like, Daniel, why do you wake up in the morning when you feel so stressed out about having spoken about this in a video yesterday, about having made a video about this public? Why do you keep talking about this? It causes me torment. It causes me alienation from society. It makes me feel different. I get criticized by it. Certainly, my own family system can’t stand me for talking about this. But my field, my psychology field in general, they look at me as kind of being weird. I don’t get invited to do all sorts of things that my peers, my psychology professional peers, who I think often are much less unique, much less well spoken, much less competent, often they get invited to do, get paid a lot of money to do. I get much more marginalized.
And I’m not complaining, really. I don’t complain about this because I see it as a very natural process. I just am more unique, saying things that are more risky, more dangerous, less conventional. So I threaten the norm. The norm doesn’t give me the perks that it gives more conventional people. And yet I suffer for it. It’s very hard. And yet what I say is the result of this is, Daniel, for whatever reason, you’re allowed to be able to even conceive of these things. You can hold this in your consciousness. Part of me doesn’t want to hold it in my consciousness. Part of me wants to run away and escape and do more traveling, to be anonymous, to be a person who nobody knows, nobody knows about my YouTube channel or my website or my deeply unconventional ideas. Sometimes it’s such a relief when I go traveling and I can just be anonymous and just be a regular person who doesn’t criticize the norm so much.
But when I come home and I have my opportunity to sit in front of the camera and to talk about this stuff, even though I’m exhausted and stressed out, it’s like, Daniel, do it anyway. This is the gift that I have been given by having discovered this unique stuff. So to get back to the subject of the unique things that I’ve discovered: okay, everybody is traumatized. Everybody is deeply harmed. I believe, therefore, that everybody, if they have the opportunity, could, should, would love to heal, should heal, try to figure this out. Because healing, although healing is torment, healing is painful, it allows us to feel purpose, to feel integration, to find out what our real purpose and meaning and inspiration is in life. It allows us to be optimally useful, not just to others but to ourselves.
Part of what I’ve gained by doing so much deep healing of my traumas—I’m not fully healed, I’m not all the way healed, but way, way more than I ever was in my life and way, way more than most people—I see what I have gained from this. From being strong inside myself, being so much more integrated than I ever was, or certainly ever in my family’s system was ever allowed to be, is that I have an incredible ally in myself on my healing journey. And that part of me that is my ally, that strong part of me, looks at me and says, Daniel, speak, share, be honest, be open. This will reach someone. You don’t know who. That’s the part of me that said keep that line in your book, Breaking from Your Parents, don’t take it out. Because what I see, what my hope is, is that everyone will have this chance.
And by the way, if you really start getting into the deep traumas, if people start getting into their deepest, deepest traumas, they will no longer fit into their family systems. Their parents, just like my parents, will reject them, will reject me. What I saw when I got into these deepest traumas is my parents profoundly denied it and, as a consequence, denied me. They’d always denied me. But when I started embodying the…
Little voice, the slowly stronger voice that I’d long since had to abandon to survive in their system, to survive under their power, under their dominion. When I got that voice back, it terrified them. And in a way, the die was cast. I couldn’t turn back. I was going to be rejected by the family system if I was going to keep the voice of my true self. The break was inevitable.
And in a strange way, I don’t wish this on anyone. I’ve been through torment, having to break from my family, having to become a true self. It has been incredibly difficult. It has been the most painful journey of my life, and I’m still on it. But it’s been glorious also because it has given me so much meaning and purpose and value. I’ve learned so much. I’ve been able to gain a new perspective on so many things.
This, the consequence of all this healing, is what I would wish on other people, not only for their sake but for mine. I want more allies. But I also see this: if more people healed, if more people did a lot more healing, really got to the root of healing stuff, and as a result of that got away from their traumatizing parents, were no longer unconsciously beholden to their parents, having to stay shut down to unconsciously try to get loved by their parents, to get approval by these people who will never and would never approve of their true self, who proved long ago when they were babies that they would reject that true self.
If more people could break away from these parents and become true and real, what a beautiful world we could live in! What a beautiful society we could have! For starters, these people—people who really healed their deep childhood wounds—these are the people in the future. If we didn’t live in such a horribly overpopulated, traumatized world, these are the people who would become the great parents, the good parents who wouldn’t so quickly and easily and in such denial harm their children.
This is why I say things like, I hope everybody breaks from their parents. I don’t wish the pain and torment of it on anyone. I never specifically advise anyone to get away from your parents, break from your parents, because so many people at such profound levels, different levels of their personality, are simply not ready. Many people are not financially ready to break away from their parents. Many people, on an emotional level, are not ready to be independent. They have no allies. Their primary allies are still, on an emotional level, their parents. If they just suddenly break away from them, they will be forlorn. They will be miserable. They will be lost. That’s why I don’t go recommending this.
But at a deeper level, I still hope. I still envision a world where the masses of people flip the script of the power dynamic and begin to side not with their parents. They don’t defend their parents and the sick sides of their parents, on the traumatizing sides of their parents, but instead side with the little crying baby who they once were and deep down still are. Side with that little crying baby who was rejected and neglected and abandoned and who nobody listened to and who became traumatized as the result of that.
I just imagine a world where everyone could do that. It’s inconceivable in a way, but in a way, it’s not. And I think my conception of this world, my conception of the realization of the necessity of this happening, this is my most unique discovery.
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