Please don't take this too seriously.

[Lancer]

Lorizael, if your family cannot help you, I understand only too well. Some folks are not meant to be family. If that's the case welcome to the club, and put one foot in front of the other until you put one year in front of another and get past this. Life can be very good and really tough. If you cut off the hard times you'll never know the good times.

[Ben Kenobi]

they could listen and understand, and...? How does their listening and understanding substantively benefit me? And even if that does provide some benefit, I've got a therapist who does just that already (among other things).

I'm not sure you really believe that their love is unconditional.

[Lorizael]

Lorizael, if your family cannot help you, I understand only too well. Some folks are not meant to be family. If that's the case welcome to the club, and put one foot in front of the other until you put one year in front of another and get past this. Life can be very good and really tough. If you cut off the hard times you'll never know the good times.

I have a perfectly decent family. I still don't understand how they're supposed to help me.

[Lancer]

I have a perfectly decent family. I still don't understand how they're supposed to help me.

You know, Love? If you don't know then stick with one foot in front of another, worked for me.

[molly bloom]

Yeah, they could listen and understand, and...? How does their listening and understanding substantively benefit me?

It won't put dollars in your pocket or food on your plate. But so what ?

Do you honestly imagine you will feel worse having told your family than you now, not having told them and keeping something hugely important about your life from them ?

I very much doubt their immediate response will be 'F*ck off, you loser' or 'That's nice dear, pass the canteloupe'.

You're already sharing your problem with people you don't now, have never met possibly will never meet, but think fit to exclude your family. That's bizarre.

[Lorizael]

You're already sharing your problem with people you don't now, have never met possibly will never meet, but think fit to exclude your family. That's bizarre.

I don't particularly care if you all are disappointed in me.

[molly bloom]

I don't particularly care if you all are disappointed in me.

I hardly know you well enough to be disappointed in you.

Which is I suspect a point of your posting here....

[Lorizael]

Precisely. There is little (but not no) shame in me posting all my problems here. The outlet is healthy, I think. But using my family as an outlet would just encourage them to worry overmuch about me. No, my parents wouldn't react with malice or indifference, but they would stress themselves out over it, and it would keep my mother up at night, and my father would blame himself for letting his son turn out like him, and so on. None of that sounds like a positive to me.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

Oh, but they'd want to know...

[Lorizael]

Well, as the Rolling Stones say...

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

Sympathy For the Devil.

[Lorizael]

You can't always get what you want...

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

I Can't Get No Satisfaction.

...

Lori, ask the rapist about Neurotherapy. Sorta biofeedback for the brain. It's done me considerable good - basically, I've gotten a lot calmer and more stable. I used to wake up mean, stupid and unable to form sentences (at least w/o shouted profanity) for the first half-hour. I'll always be a bear first thing in the morning, but it's no longer more than your life is worth to talk to me before I've had coffee.

...

You have not, and have no plans to, read The Tao of Pooh, yes?

[Lorizael]

You have not, and have no plans to, read The Tao of Pooh, yes?

I prefer my cobbled-together Eastern philosophical pseudo-beliefs to be Buddhism-tinged rather than Taoism-tinged.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

See, the thing is, it's pretty much all stuff I cobbled together worked out for myself - the crap I said pages ago about enjoying the color of the sky and all that. But six months after I'd more or less worked out my new system, someone had lent me the book, and I discovered I'd been anticipated by Lao Tzu and Zhuangzi by a very long time.

There's a lot of bullcrap religious stuff grafted onto Taoism, just like with Buddhism, but at its heart, it's just a self-help philosophy, again just like Buddhism. The book doesn't go into any of the bullcrap, but rather, articulates clearly and readably the basic positive-thinking philosophy. It's short, too - pick it up at the library and give it a try.

It's also a charming analysis of Pooh. [shrugs]