TRANSCRIPT
Back in 2004, before YouTube was even a thing, I sat down and wrote my autobiography. Well, needless to say, I did not publish it; otherwise, it would be out there for the world to see. But I realized that autobiography that I wrote was for me. I was the primary audience, and really, I needed to read my own autobiography. And really, I read it as I wrote it.
Well, here’s how it went. It was a time in my life, back in, mmm, April, May, June 2004, where I was just starting a full-time private practice as a therapist. I’d already been a therapist for five years, but now I was finally going into full-time private practice, and I did not have a lot of clients. So sometimes I’d only see 10, 12, 13 people a week. So I thought, well, why not? Why not write my autobiography? I did it kind of as an experiment. I didn’t know what it would be like, but once it started, it took off. I ended up writing for hours and hours and hours every single day, and writing basically as fast as I could type.
I’d already been writing essays for a few years at that point, and before that, I’d even tried writing a few travel logs, written a lot of short stories, and journaling for years. Well, writing this autobiography was different. It just poured out of me. It flowed out of me. Literally, I was writing in the same way that they said about Jack Kerouac when he wrote the book “On the Road.” It was typing. It was just like a channel was coming out of me, and it was flowing out of me, telling my story in a chronological order, starting at my birth. And even I went a little bit before my birth. I told the story to some degree about my parents and my grandparents and some of my other ancestry.
Well, the reason I bring it up now is I want to talk about how writing that autobiography affected me. And I would say affected me is probably a mild way to put it. What I would say more like is it changed my life. And what it did to—and this was really not something that I was expecting. I thought, now I’ll just write the story of my life, done. Well, what happened is all these connections happened in my mind. I just realized all this cause and effect, cause and effect, cause and effect. Things that happened to me in my childhood that affected me in my adulthood. Things that happened to me in my childhood affected me in my teen years. Things that happened to me in my teen years affecting me in my 20s and my 30s. It was just a massive connection of cause and effect that was right there in front of me.
And something about having it there in front of me, not having it as all these disintegrated pieces in my memory. And by the way, a lot of this—all of it, perhaps—I had already told two people. I had already written all these parts in my journals over the years. I talked about it with friends, talked about it even, sorry, kind of a sake if they didn’t help me very much with therapists. But somehow, putting it down in chronological order in a document and writing it fast, I wrote the whole thing in five weeks. And I wrote it for seven days a week. It became like an absolute fundamental mission for me, something that was so passion-driven.
And it was like something about writing it and really fast and not censoring it, all just saying everything that happened, not hiding certain things. I just made a decision very, very early on that I just wanted to tell the truth—not only what had happened to me, but what I had done. And by the way, it was incredibly painful to write. Not just the things that had happened to me, but a lot of the things that I did. I felt sadness, guilt, shame, horror, disgust—not just about the traumas that had been done to me, but the bad things that I’d done to other people and the bad things that I had done to myself. It was so intense.
And just getting it all down in this arc. And what was I? When I was in 2004, I was only 32 years old. It felt kind of strange. Who am I at 32 to be writing my autobiography? But then there was another part of me that’s like, you know, I’ve lived a long time. I’ve been an adult for a long time, and I was a kid for a long time. 32 years is a very long time in a strange way to be alive.
Now, what is it? 16 years later, practically 16 years later in my life, I have a lot more adult history, more insight—more wisdom, I would say. More knowledge about myself, more history about—more knowledge about what happened to me, more years of looking back, more years of changing. But by 32, I really was ready, clearly, because I saw how it affected me and how much came out of me to write that autobiography.
And well, how did it affect me? How did it change me? It was like just self-knowledge, just a profoundly increased amount of self-knowledge. And I have an analogy, a little story that I heard once from someone. It was just in one sentence: it’s once the genie comes out of the bottle, he can never go back in. Or maybe once the cat comes out of the bag, he’s never going back in again. And that’s what happened to me. It was like a lot of my story, my history, my knowledge, my awareness of myself, my memories—because they were so disintegrated, it was like they were just in parts. And that was sort of like they were in a bag. They were in a bottle. They were compressed. They were all in there with all that emotion.
But when they came out, when I put it on paper in this chronological order, something happened. Some emotion connected in me. It was like this was really an external representation of me, this autobiography on paper. And it wasn’t even on paper; it was just in a computer. And I was different after that. I looked at myself differently. I looked at my family differently. I looked at my history differently. I realized so much more clearly how much my parents had affected me. And the funny thing is, I already knew how much they affected me even before I wrote it. But putting it on paper in this chronological order, in this arc, was powerful. It was so powerful.
And it was also like I had a new relationship with myself, a new appreciation for what I had gone through, in my—what I had become, how lost I had become in so many different ways, how hurt I was, how I had hurt other people. It makes me a lot more humble. No way—it was like, oh, before that, I guess I had more of a veil over my self-image. I thought I was more healthy in a way, and I realized after writing that that I was less healthy. But also, I had more reason to be less healthy. I got a lot more compassion for myself.
And I was so grateful. Somehow, even within the first few days, I knew this is important. This is a really important thing that you’re doing, Daniel. And at first, I thought, oh, I’m gonna share this with the world. Well, after a few days, I thought, you know, I don’t think I have to share this with the world. I can decide someday if I want to share this with the world. But for right now, I’m gonna give myself a gift, and I’m gonna share it with me.
And I think if I had been really committed to sharing it with the world at that point, I would have censored it. I wouldn’t have been ready to share a lot of that stuff. And why should I have had to share that with anybody, really? It was like I needed to know it for myself. I realized I really was giving myself a gift at age 32.
Now, after I finished it, it was like I’d run a 35-day marathon. And then I sat back, and I didn’t look at it for a while. I didn’t look at it for a few months. But then I did open it up, and I started reading it again, and I started editing it, and I sort…
Of had this idea. Oh my god, this is really important. The world should see this. And so I started editing it, and then I noticed I wanted to start censoring a little bit. Censoring some of the things that had happened to me, censoring some of the things I had done, censoring some of my thoughts, some of my embarrassing things that I’d done, shameful stuff that I had done, thoughts that were weird or strange, some of the stranger times in my life.
Well, I never made it through editing that whole book, but I think it was about seven or eight years later I started reading it again, trying to read the whole thing and realizing, you know, it wasn’t what we would call tight. It was sort of loose. There was still a lot of mushy stuff. I went into too much detail, I think, in some points, some irrelevant stuff. It basically needed to be edited in a big way, and I thought, well, maybe someday. But what I started realizing also is someday, and that day may not come for a long time. That day may never come. Well, I’m still alive. I do want to share this with the world, or maybe I’m going to write another version of it that’s maybe even more honest, more knowledge about what happened to me, more knowledge about how it affected me. But someday I would like to share that, and to me that is some gift that I want to give with my life before I die. Not that I’m necessarily going to show it to the world before I die, but I want to have it be ready to be shared before I die.
Now, why wouldn’t I share it now, or why wouldn’t I share it in 10 years or 20 years? Well, part of it is I wrote about a lot of other people, and I don’t want to hurt anybody. Now one could say, why do you talk so much about your parents? You say, I’ll share all this negative stuff about your parents, stuff that happened to your parents, stuff your parents did. Why do you share that? Well, to me that is an exception. When parents have a child, they give the child consent to talk about them, to be honest about them. And to me, that is the right of the child to talk openly and honestly and without censorship about his or her parents. And I believe that so firmly.
Now, I believe that in one other area too. I believe that therapy clients have a full right to be able to share whatever they want about their therapist. So basically what I mean by that is with therapy clients or people who were therapy clients, there is no such thing as confidentiality from the perspective of the client or the patient, whatever you want to call this person. But on the other hand, from the perspective of the therapist, complete confidentiality. Don’t talk about your clients. Don’t talk about their personal stuff. Maybe there’s some times where it’s okay to talk about general concepts, and I think that is important. Share about general things, maybe share about certain things that especially if the client gives permission to be able to share about it. Also to talk about patterns, things that one has learned as a therapist in general from clients in therapy. But sharing personal details about real people, especially with their identity, I don’t do it. That’s not okay.
And I also feel the same way about parents. Don’t talk about your kids. It makes me a little nuts when I hear parents talk about their kids, talk about their kids so openly, talk about their kids on the Internet. Oh, my kid did this, my kid did that, talking about my kid’s problems, that kind of thing. It’s like I think that really breaks the confidentiality that a parent should have about their child. The child should be allowed to grow up anonymously without being talked about publicly.
Another thing, I tried making a video about this the other day. It didn’t quite come out right, but the basic idea is something that I really don’t like when I hear parents do is when I hear them talk in strange ways or negative ways or in humorous ways about their children right in front of the child. And I hear that so often. It’s so parent, it’s so common. I think, and my parents did it with me. My mom especially, she would tell about embarrassing things that I did, foolish things that I did, sometimes sexual things I did when I was really little. Actually, things that weren’t really even sexual, but just sometimes related to certain parts of my body or certain things that I said when I was 2, 3 years old. Didn’t know any better, just being a normal little kid. And she would talk about it in a humorous way, and I remember sometimes her friends or my dad or other people, her family members would laugh, and they would look at me, and I would be embarrassed. I didn’t even know why I should be embarrassed, but I just remember the tone that she used.
And that’s something I hear parents do so often, telling these embarrassing stories or analyzing their children in front of them. Oh, my kid does this, why do you think he does that? Why do you think she does that? Right in front of the child. And it’s like, so I did just want to add that in, and I wanted to add that in also in this greater subject about writing one’s autobiography.
So what about people who are parents? When they become parents, is part of their autobiography their child, their child’s development, their child’s life, the mistakes they made as a parent, the weird, strange, sometimes things that their children did, perhaps as consequences of what the parents did? Well, I think that that shouldn’t go into a book. I think parents, I don’t know how I would do that if I were a parent and I wanted to write my autobiography, but I think the best way, the most honorable way to write an autobiography if you’re a parent is leave your kids out of it. Let them have their privacy. Let them write their own story. Let them figure out their own story for themselves and publicly share it if they someday wish or get it down on paper someday if they wish.
And I think also when parents take that leap into telling the story of their child, telling all sorts of personal stories about their child or about their child’s problems, often so-called problems, especially, I think it really does screw a child up in a way. It steals their story. It doesn’t allow them to explore their own story in a more honest and neutral way, in a scientific way, in a way of really gathering data without already having had a fore drawn conclusion.
And I think a lot of times when parents tell the stories of their children, why is my child this way? What happened to my child? Why is the child my child the way they are? It puts a lot of pressure on that child to accept that story as true. And that also happened to me in my life. There were a lot of things I believed about myself that were part of the biography of me that I kind of accepted as part of just being a part of my family system, being a less powerful member of my family system before I knew any better.
And in a way, writing my autobiography and telling my own story was wonderfully liberating. It was like I overturned a lot of those stories, overturned a lot of those ideas about me. Oh, Daniel’s not very social, or Daniel doesn’t know how to make friends, or Daniel has all this anxiety because of ABC, or Daniel has this problem, or Daniel that, that, that. And it was like for me really to tell my own story and to tell it in the context of what happened to me and what the consequences were, it was liberating.
And I wanted to say it made me feel great, but it didn’t make me feel great a lot of times. It was incredibly painful. There was so much grief while writing. I hadn’t experienced it to that degree ever in those 35 days of writing my autobiography. I remember so many times just writing and with tears streaming down my face. Sometimes I just had to stop and really cry really hard. It was like these connections were being made, and it was like I was ready for it at that point.
Also, another thing is writing that…
Story, it undid the narrative that a lot of those therapists had told about me. A lot of those therapists, when I presented a lot of the raw material of my life to them, they drew conclusions from it. They put me in two different boxes. They put me in two different, even diagnostic categories, and fed that back to me. And somehow, for various reasons, I think a big part of it is that I was looking for love in therapy. I think that’s so common—looking for someone to care about me, respect me, honor me, make sense of my life to me. I was looking to someone who I’d hoped, I believed even to some degree, had more perspective on my life than I did. Someone who seemed put together, mature, professional, with degrees and licenses, with an office. And a lot of that stuff that they fed back to me actually just screwed me up worse. It twisted me away from my story. It made me hard and made it harder for me to understand myself.
So when I wrote my autobiography, in a way, it was an act of liberation from them, from therapy, from being a client, from being a child in the family system, in a way, in a child’s position in therapy.
Now, of course, the logical thing that I’m asking myself is how was I as a therapist with my clients? Well, I think that writing my autobiography and making sense of my story and realizing the incredible value of me gathering my own data, crunching the numbers for myself, being scientific about creating my own narrative in my story, it made me honor the process of doing that. And I think I remember, I feel it still, that I became much more hesitant to tell other people who they were, why they were the way that they are. Often they asked me. Sometimes I would try to tell them. I would try to explain it. I would speculate. But I think I was much more hesitant about it. A lot of times I couched what I was saying in “I’m not really sure,” or “maybe it’s this,” or “in my experience this has happened to me, this has happened to other people I know, but I don’t know if it applies to you.” Or “you have to figure it out,” or “maybe you can try writing down your own story,” or “maybe you should try journaling.” Or, you know, I told people this and I believed it, and I share this all the time. I think there’s nobody better to tell our own stories and to collect our own data and to really know the truth about who we are—nobody better than we ourselves.
And therapy can help. Having an outside person who cares about us, who loves us, who strives to be insightful, who really tries to be neutral and asks questions, but not really neutral—really fights for being on our side—that can be helpful. But ultimately, each person has to make sense of their own story, and they have to bounce their own story off their inner voice of truth. And no therapist can really ultimately tell the story of their client because ultimately they haven’t lived inside that person’s skin. They can have empathy, and they can have compassion. They can have insight. They can identify, they can try to identify, they can have psychology experience gathered from wherever they got it from. But ultimately, it’s each person’s own privilege, I think, the honor of being an individual to be able to tell one’s own story however one wants to tell it. And also, just like for me, to be able to modify that story, to change it, to grow, to have more insight, to look back on one story that one created—the narrative one created—whether it’s on paper, on the computer, or just in one’s head, or in having shared it with somebody else, and to say, you know, it wasn’t quite right what I said.
And there are things that are in my autobiography from when I was 32 that I would change if I wrote it again. And I would like to write it again. I’d like to write it more succinctly. I think, well, maybe not. Maybe it’ll even be longer. I often know that when I read a book, I like a book that’s short and succinct, with an exception. And that is if the book is really original, and if it’s really well-written, and if it’s really clearly written, and it’s really honest. And then I love it when a book is really long. When a book is fantastic and it’s a thousand pages long, what I say is “lucky me.” And when a book—well, maybe it’s not so great, or it’s not so original, or there aren’t so many different original ideas—I like it when it’s shorter and it just gets to the point, and I’m in and out. But when it’s long, hmm, wonderful.
And maybe that’ll be true for my autobiography someday. Maybe I will write a thousand-page autobiography, or maybe not. Maybe I’ll write a 200-page autobiography, or maybe there’ll be a thousand pages. Oh, maybe I’m sorry, maybe there’ll be a hundred pages in it that will be really relevant. I think that was my unconscious speaking when I said a thousand pages. I think I like to think that it will be long. It will get into detail about what happened to me and what I’ve done with my life. And so that is something that is a goal, honestly. And I figured that out, I think, within the last year or so, that that’s something that I want to do before I die. Is have that book really prepared. And when I say before I die, I say that because I see myself getting older, and I think, you know, hmm, I will die someday. It’s really when I was younger, it seemed kind of impossible that I would die. I took a lot more risks because I just thought it’s impossible. Well, now I’ve almost died a few times in many strangely different ways. I’ve seen other people die, a lot of friends die. Death is a real thing to me now, not the fantasy that it was.
So at some point, maybe I’m gonna get back to working. Maybe I’ll do it. Well, I did it at 32, wrote that autobiography. Maybe I’ll write it again at 52. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll write it at 50. Maybe I’ll even write it in this coming year.