Steve Hein's Thread

[stevehein]

My idea is to use this thread as a place to centralize my writing on SS.

I figure that would be ok with SR, but please let me know SR.

S.

[stevehein]

May 18, 19 writing

http://eqi.org/p1/uruguay/ss/ss_writing3.htm

http://eqi.org/p1/uruguay/ss/ss_writing4.htm

[SoulRiser]

I approve of this thread.

Now to reply to things...

Quote:cuz i think a guy my age shouldnt be accepting or needing donations from a person her age.

This smells of ageism. But I think I know what you mean. Something about dignity?

Quote:oh and to sr yeah maybe u could host my site... i pretty much hate my hosting service - host department. pls tell me more how that could/would work

Sure. I'll email you the details.

Quote:id feel really bad if u got it one day cuz no one warned u.

Oddly it seems people don't generally mention computer use as a major cause. I used to get hand cramps from gaming with my older mice, but since I got my latest one, that hasn't happened. So ergonomics seems to be quite important, and I am definitely paying more attention to long-term comfort of things I use, including keyboard placement, chair height, armrests, etc. I even came to the conclusion that the design of pens and pencils is not ergonomic at all and should be re-designed.

Quote:Help make ss a more caring community.

I give this idea a 10/10. I've been trying to nudge it in that direction for years. I'm open to ideas.

Quote:sr and xc both asked me what would help me feel more valued. one answer is if pple on ss would start to use my way of communicating on the forums and in their classrooms and families. and with their friends and bf's and gf's. and if they would give me feedback..

So your value depends on other people? You don't feel like you have any inherent value by yourself?

Quote:i have been called too sensitive for this world, but i prefer to say the world is too insensitive for me, so i am doing what i can to make it a more sensitive place - a more emotionally intelligent place.

Yeah, the world is pretty insensitive, and I agree it would be good for more people to be more understanding. Pain is there for a reason, it's not just something that should be shrugged off and ignored. It's a symptom, not the actual problem itself. It's there as a clue that there's something that needs fixing...

Quote:do u know anyone on the forums who goes to sudbury or went there, or any similar alt schools?

I'm not aware of anyone who actually went to one of those, no. Some alternative schools yes, but nothing quite like Sudbury. I suppose if they did go to those, they might not have googled 'I hate school'.

Quote:do u know any teachers who might be open to applying my ideas?

I don't know a whole lot of teachers in general, but we had an interesting thread here a while back... http://forums.school-survival.net/showth...?tid=28969

[xcriteria]

Another quick question is, are you familiar with Myers-Briggs and Jung's theory of temperament? What are your thoughts?

It strikes me that one of the differences between you and I is that I tend to use the extraverted thinking function when I interact with other people. The result is that I come across as analytical more than emotionally supportive. I'm an INTJ, so according to the theory (and my experience), my dominant Jungian function is introverted intuition and my secondary one is extraverted thinking. So I use that intuition function to dig through all the content I've absorbed and I think about how to apply it in the form of explanations. That mode of interaction comes most naturally to me.

THe third function for INTJ's is introverted feeling, and I think that accurately describes me. I feel and value, but it's most naturally an inner thing that doesn't necessarily come across in my writing. It does, however, impact how I relate to things.

You strike me as having more of a dominant feeling function. Anyway, all of these abilities can be developed by everyone, it just takes some digging to develop them! Here's a thread on the topic if you want to explore: Jung/Briggs-Meyers Test. Thoughts/feelings on that?

[SoulRiser]

xc, have you considered creating infographics with all the massive amounts of information you go through? Might be easier for people to absorb... pretty pictures, and all that. They also make good 'link bait', to get people to visit whatever site you post them on (post them here plox).

[stevehein]

thanks again to sr and xc for reading my stuff.. and for their detailed replies.

u guys have given me a lot of es - emotional support by helping me feel valued and understood and cared about.

sr i will reply to ur question about feeling valued later... p and i have been talking about it and we want to write about the idea of pple valuing themselves or feeling valued by others etc.

btw we are getting ready to go to brazil in a couple days to renew our visas so i might be absent for a bit. or i might wake up at 3 am and write some more! who knows!

anyhow thanks again. : )

oh yeah and thanks u guys for giving me numbers - i do like that system : )

[stevehein]

Could someone please watch the youtube video called "Bill Gates_ Teachers need real feedback" - (sorry i dont have the link . my connection is very slow so I wont try to find it again..)

Then tell me everything u can think of that is wrong with it... for me it was very discouraging to see. In fact I have been depressed most of today from that and some other reasons.. I'd feel better if I knew that someone else saw the same kinds of problems with the whole thing as I saw.

I have been scared and depressed by what is happening in the USA - where I lived most of my life, but where I probably won't live again. This video adds to my feelings. I was hoping for something a lot better from someone as obviously intelligent as Bill Gates.

I was thinking that some good feedback *from the students* like how much they feel cared about by the teacher from 0-10 and how free they feel or how controlled or how bored... would be a great idea.. but that wasn't at all what Bill G has in mind.

[stevehein]

something i want to save -- journal notes from tonight around 3 AM

===

Loss - I use writer.bigehugelabs.com now cuz it saves a back up about every 2 seconds - losing my writing has been so painful it motivated me to look for an online site that backs up quickly - and i really like the way that one works. it is really simple. and i changed the background to black which helps me focus somehow on the words.

Loss is painful
Rejection is painful
Isolation is painful

Lies are painful
Dishonesty is painful

Hypocrisy is painful

(so all of this adds up to what we call depression)



Why? Because they are evil
Intellingent answers

Peeling the onion


(what i was thinking of here was cause effect why things happen - why are pple "depressed" - and i thought of david caruso's infamous answer to one of my questions about 911 when he said because they are evil. for the curiousjust search david caruso on my site eqi.org



I'm not depressed. I feel x y z and abc

I feel better when I say "I am not depressed."

I am abnormal.

Normal is sick, unhealthy.


Cause and effect - evil or trauma

I can't make my contribution to the group if I get kicked out of it.

What would it take to get banned from Aces?

I have been banned from Out of the Fog - because I put in two or three links to my site and then I got an email from xxredshoes or someone saying my posts were being "vetted"- so I replied and asked XX how they felt when they read my posts. Then I was banned.

Would you ban me here if I asked how you felt when you read my posts?
(talking about aces - not ss)

Your community - not my community. (again aces)

In geology they taught me that the present is the key to past. I thought of this as I was thinking 'adverse childhood exp..." and about my quote from about 2013 or 2014 that it is hard to heal when you keep getting wounded.

How would Jane feel if she knew that I had ____

[stevehein]

sometimes i feel a need to run.. to escape.. to get away.

from my own ..... knowledge. --- the things i know. the things i have seen - the things i have experienced.

i want to talk to someone right now -- but there is no one here. i used to talk to priscilla - but she is gone.i dont even know what country she is in

----------------------------------------------------------

[stevehein]

i want to say thank you, again, to soulriser

interesting name soul riser

never asked her how she picked it

i dont believe in souls - not the kind that are like casper the friendly ghost - ie i dont believe in ghosts or spirits

i dont consider myself spiritual

the word itself actually "triggers" a fair amount of pain from memories and knowledge of how people use it

here is one example

i am a father who is raping my daughter - i am very "spiritual"

i have taught her that her soul chose to come into her body and chose to come into this family, this culture etc.

so i dont have to feel much empathy when i am raping her and i leave her crying

i just tell myself, and her, that she chose to come into this situation.

pretty convenient isn't it?

or is it a cop out? hmm good question. but i will say it is neither one. it is just a fact. it is reality.

i heard a mother say something veryvery similar once to me and her daughter

the girl was heidi. this was in florida

around 1995

the mother kept telling heidi that heidi "chose" to come into her mother's life.

*shakes head....

anyhow, i said to heidi, do you sharethat belief, heidi?

and her mother interrupted - as mothers so often do -- and said "It's not a belief. It's a fact!"

oh ok. right. thanks for "correcting" me

Heidi remained silent. As teenage daughters often do -- around their parents,

But it's funny how much they have to say when they talk to me alone.

[stevehein]

i dont really have a hell of a lot of time, or interest, to control what others say here, but when they say it in what i consider one of "my" threads, that's different. to me at least

recently as many of you dear readers know sr made me a powerful global moderater but i dont really want to moderate a hell of a lot - i do though want to control what happens in my threads -- and now i can

i have a very high level of respect for sr - she doesnt like stuff to be deleted so i wont delete stuff anymore. i deleted one comment and asked her after how she felt- how ok it was and she said 7 so now i know that she doesnt even like little comments which to both of us had little value, to be deleted- i told her that for me it was almost like spam, which she is ok 10 with deleting. but she still felt some pain at me deleting the almost spam like comment. actually i will say it actually was spam and here is why

what does spam try to get u to do? pay attention to something useless. something that ... well u get my idea i think. so that is about all i feel a need to say. but just a bit more...

let's say i need money so i spam u to try to get u to buy some stupid fucking thing. now compare that to if i need attention so i say any stupid fucking thing just to try to get your attention for 10 seconds or something. well for me that is spam. u just wasted 10 minutes of my life, which i value.

so yeah - that's enough about that.

back to control

i moved 2 or three of xcriteria's posts from this thread. he was writing more than i was here! haha

I like xc - who doesnt, right? but well, we all know how he posts here haha or he used to. i think a lot of us miss him. so hug to xc if u ever read this. but anyhow i value what he has to say and dont feel a huge need to control it, but just in my threads.

cuz i want pple to just flow from one of my thoughts to another. i want them to have a place to come to if they just want to read my writing. something like that.

a lot of teens have told me that the feel safe or comforted or something when they read my writing. it is like one big hug to them. one big "i love you" and "I value you" and i will cry and cry if u kill yourself.....

so they feel cared about, even though i dont know them. but sometimes even after a long time they write me and thank me.

so yeah that's that about control. again thank you to sr who has helped me feel more in control of my life by helping me feel more in control of my threads and also beyond that if i see something i think is hurtful abusive etc, in another thread i will pull it out and move it.

i feel trusted by sr. actually i asked her once not long ago how much she trusted me and she said 9.

im a bit afraid she doesnt want me telling ppl that haha.

but she will let me know - i think - if she doesnt like it.

we have a pretty good relationship now, it seems to me. i like how we can talk to each other about a lot of things and be pretty emotionally honest and feel pretty safe that we are not gonna just disappear out of each other's lives. we both are pretty much terrified, or i am at least, of abandonment.

sr is very interesting. i keep learning from her. and keep teaching her haha she is an ok student. lol

hug to sr. im an asshole sometimes - i will admit it. i judge and evaluate everyone

except brainac

i haven't said much about braniac haha

he said once he missed me i think and that i hadn't psychoanalyzed him lol

sorry about that brainiac! im gonna put it on my to do list ok?

for now I will just say -- hmm how shall i put this? haha --- um... well i dont know how to say it. maybe one day we can chat.

ok i will say this much. sometimes i really have a hard time figuring out how you are feeling. i have to guess or "decode" things you say. and i kind of worry about you. i have this belief we really need to know how we feel so we can know what we need. otherwise we are a danger to ourselves and others, as the saying goes.....

[stevehein]

here is another job offer

i will pay someone to organize all of my posts here on ss and to help me copy them and make a little pdf book out of them.

i wont pay a lot but if ur a nerdy, emo teen with nothing to do and u have a lot of time on ur hands and dont want to spend it on porn or fan fiction etc - like priscilla used to haha -- then this could be the perfect online job for u!

[stevehein]

Here is a copy of an article I will post to the aces connection site later


====

When I was in Portugal in 2014 I heard a lot about the corruption in the government - how a former president had stolen billions and was walking free in Paris or something and similar stories. So I started asking people this question

How much do you trust the Portuguese govt from 0 to 10?

Most of the answers were less than 5. There were a lot of zero's and ones.

So today when I saw a GSK logo in a picture here on ACES and I remembered that I had been reading about and hearing about GSK and how they were fined 3 billion dollars or something I decided it might be interesting to ask people here on Aces to tell me how much they trust the big drug companies, like GSK and Eli Lilly.

BTW when I learned that people did not trust their government in Portugal, I stared wondering why they were volunarily turning their most valued treasures, their children, into the hands of these people they didn't trust.

[stevehein]

When I was living in Canada I met a guy around college age who was named Jean Yves I think.

I remember he told me that one of his university professors said something like "What are you doing wasting your time here in this university? You could be doing so much more to help the world."

I thought of this because I was thinking about how many things I have been writing and posting here and there. I thought of saying to a high school student, you don't have time for doing homework and going to classes, It will take you all day and all night just to keep up with all the things I am writing about.

I am speaking very seriously. You all have a limited amount of time on this earth. At least in my belief system you only get one shot, one life. I don't believe you will come back as a frog or a queen or something. I think this is it.

I value yourlives, I value your time. I don't think your teachers or even most of your parents really do. I think they want to use you to fill some of their own needs.

But anyhow, I have been learning so much lately, just in the past few days about rats and cages and drugs and addictions and obscenely rich drug company executives and how they have been getting fined for everything from bribes to i dont even remember what all else.

How many of you know anything, even one fucking thing about the drug company gsk?

I consider myself pretty well informed and i didnt even know gsk was a fucking drug company till this week.

guys, girls, transy's - you are all getting massively fucked over - some of you seem to get that. some don't

some are planning to stay in the system and go right on into uni.

i feel sad about that, very sad.

i say u dont have time for uni. there is too much more important work to do.

take a lead from people like soulriser and i and xcriteria we pretty much are dedicating our time, our lives to helping pple like you. none of us are getting rich at this and we are not even getting much appreciation or support. it still hurts me that almost no one has suppoted sr on patreon and no one even sent her a fucking thank you when i posted my announcment.

she doesnt like me writing this kind of stuff about her so i apologize in advance butit just pains me so much to feel so unappreciated and so unvalued by so many people. not to mention unsupported and unhelped even when i offer to pay pple to help me... i have way way way more to do than i can possibly do alone and i know that is a guilt trip but that is hoow i learned to express myself we might say - although u could also easily say that is a copout or whatever. so i will say it another way - i really dont know yet how to express my pain in a way that will help get what i need.... and saying that i start to feel discouraged and i think of job or someone who said something encouraging and i feel appreciative of that. sometimes just one encouraging comment is all i need to keep me going for one more day

like this guy i met who was riding his bike around the world trying to do it with almost no money - just depending on the help of other people and it was working. he had been to 148fucking countries by bike when he got to montenegro where i had my hostel. he said "i just need one nice person per day"

One nice person per day

that really stuck in my mind

but what if, what if we had 2 nice people each day, or 3 or 10?

then what could we do?

there is so much potential in the world, in humanity and schools are doing their fucking best to stifle it

so get the fuck out as much as u can as fast as u can and as long as u can. that ismy suggestion and my plea we might say

[stevehein]

someone named madelyn has written me a few times. she is a teen in the usa. i think. i dont feel very connected to her. i cant remember much about her. i feel bad saying that but it is true. i dont 'bend over backwards' like i used to to try to help suicidal teens. ive just got too many of my own unmet needs, let's say

anyhow i wanna show u the last two emails i got from her

but wait..when i went to check my mail i saw a new mail so i read it..

this was it

===
Hi,

I’m sorry to bother, I saw you were being slightly overwhelmed with the number of emails being sent.

I was wondering if you could please send me the full “Is your mother emotionally abusive” test of 113 questions.

My mother constantly attempts to threaten me in order to get me to do what I want (aka- If you don’t go ride your horse, I’m going to call Pau’s mom (best friend) and tell her to pick her up (knowing their car is broken), in order to embarrass her and make me feel bad), and when that didn’t work she kept yelling at me in order to try to get me to do so until I called my father (lives in another city) so he would speak to her and I locked myself in my room, sobbing with my best friend.

And today, I told her (for the 10th time this week) that I wouldn’t be going to the competition in a city two hours away because it would take up too much of my time to study for AP Exams in two weeks (I don’t know anything of the material of AP Physics 1 and AP Calculus). She said okay, but then said we would go to see my father (in the same city) because he was leaving on vacation for two weeks in another country. I attempted to make her understand that that wouldn’t work, and then (after about an hour of text arguing during which she threatened to take out the excused absence at school and say I did not go because I did not feel like it, thus earning me truancy at school and another atonement, knowing I already have plenty of issues with school administration, and attempted to make me feel bad by saying we haven’t seen him in two weeks, “that’s so sad,” and things of the like), she said I either stay at my grandparent’s house or I go to the city, knowing that I don’t like staying with my grandparents. I said I could stay with my best friend and, because she knows I like to stay there and I feel happy there, partly also because my best friend is my crush/partner, she said I cannot and repeated “that’s so sad that you cannot go see your father but you can see your friends” while she knows that seeing my father requires losing a day and a half of studying and seeing my friend, in this case, would require 30 mins of driving to her house. I had to call my aunt to see if I could stay there, until I managed to resolve it.

Then, she called my dad and informed him I would not be going (when I had said all week I wouldn’t be going to both of them), and said to me “we are giving you the benefit of the doubt that you are actually worried about your exams.” She has seen me studying for days straight for them and has mentioned on several occasions that the exams do not matter to her, but then told my aunt when she called her today that “she knows they are very important.” After agreeing to allow me to stay at my aunt’s house she told me “But of course, no permission to go anywhere this weekend.” She knows very well that I need to study and also that I need time to hang out with people in order to not get overwhelmed, yet she denies me this now because she is “upset with me.”

On other occasions, she has also slapped me until I stood up to her and said if you hit me one more time I will hit you back.

I’m sorry about the long post, I just need something to support my point to my friends because they don’t think I have it that bad. I forgot to mention, I’m a 16 year old girl in Venezuela, I lived in the States for the first ten years of my life and my brothers still leave her.

Just five minutes ago she used my keys to open the door to my room and then when I told her to leave she didn’t leave and I don’t remember what happened and she slapped me and when I slapped her back she said go ahead hit me if you can go ahead and then when I tried to push her out she ran inside my room so I couldn’t and I had to call my dad to get her to leave and I can’t keep going like this

Please send me it

[brainiac3397]

I dont think anyone can decode me. I might even be an enigma. A paradox. An anachronism in this timeline existing yet not. Surfing beneath the waves of consciousness but striding atop the subconscious crust of material awareness. Or I might just be eccentric and humbly arrogant while merely being fortunate to find at an early age the perfect spot in the shadows to be known yet unknown, seen yet unseen, waiting for that one fateful opportunity to become what I could not even forsee._

I trust in my sight but don't deny my blindness,
I always listen to the sounds but don't always hear.
Belief and disbelief are merely siblings, two of one source.
When I look into the mirror do I see me or myself?
It matters not because each day is new,
Like the phoenix, from ashes I arise anew.

[stevehein]

I feel... very sad, powerless, almost powerless. I am in pain from re-reading the letter i got from the girl in venezuela

i thought of trying to get some emotional support from someone. but no one comes to mind that i feel sure will give me that support. mostly eu let's say empathy and understanding

eu means i in por chew geese by the way

that made me laugh just a little. i miss my old teen friends. we used to laugh, and cry, a lot together.

anyhow i read something sr said and it added to my pain - to my unmet need for to feel understood more specifically. i never told her this, and now i think she will probably think 'why didntyou tell me' haha. i think, but im not 100 percent sure - well i am like 95 percent sure, she would prefer that pple tell her things that bother them, hurt them- trigger or "stimulate" pain, as marshall b rosy says.

so what she said was in this thread. she said something like
so your value depends on other people and u dont value yourself?

2 thoughts oop up RE that. 1 is that i do value myself. very highly, or so i think. many people think or say i am arrogant bc i value myself so much in fact.or that is how i see it. the pain comes from not feeling valued by others. for example, let's say i am with someone who is trying to solve a math problem and for me it is pretty simple and i offer to help them but they say leave me alone, what do you know about math? you think you know more than me? just keep your mouth shut. i know what i am doing.

and then i proceed to watch as they "solve" it wrong and get the wrong answer.

so for me at least that would be a case where i valued my math ability and they rejected it. and rejected me. that kind of stuff happens to me almost daily. yeah probably daily and i feel pretty sure that some days it happens more than once so on average it is probably fair to say it happens on a daily basis.

the second thing is i am thinking of rosenberg who gave the example of psychiatrists who asked questions to get more information rather than showing empathy. and i will add rather than showing understanding. i think i have added that to my youtube account eqivideos.

so anyhow back to depression soup - one of the ingredients is to care about other people. to feel empathy. to feel their pain. another is to feel powerless to help them. in this case i can help the vgirl a little - i already sent her a supportive email and offered to chat with her and sent her the mom test.

id like to do a lot more so according to william james i can lower my expectations and i will be happier. haha nice trick billy.

i think in this case i will try it cuz i want to keep my energy level up so i can do some more writing or actually organizing and posting of things i wrote last night around 4 am.

[stevehein]

to luke from ss


so apparently the nice folks at aces have banned me from the community

could u see if u can still log in? there are some pple id like to try to stay in touch with and at least let them know i was banned.

i can't even think of a specific reason why.

ive been posting a lot and it has been strong but banning me?

this is how great people get created i guess. shit like this keeps happening to strengthen their resolve.

s

======

to jane stevens who runs aces

hi jane

i just got a notice i was banned from the aces community

could you check this out please and get back to me? i hope this is just a mistake or mix up

or a joke but im afraid someone felt threatened by me being in the group

thanks

s

[stevehein]

http://forums.school-survival.net/showth...?tid=36431

[stevehein]

something i was saving as a draft and going to publish later on aces

I am crying now..... I need to get that "out of the way"

So ok I have acknowledged and accepted the message my body was sending me. Now I can get back to "work." And write.
I want to write, and I will be writing, about painful memories.

You have probably heard it said that negative thoughts cause depression or depression comes from negative thoughts.

So one question might be, ok, then where do these so called negative thoughts comes come from?

My answer: Painful memories.

Combined with one's "education" - what they have learned from those around them. How they have learned to express their pain, their feelings, their thoughts, their situations, their "cages."

But I want to write about painful memories.

Let's just take one real world example. Those are the kind I like by the way. I like theories but I especially like real world examples.

I have been getting emails from a black American -- no wait, that is not the politically correct thing to say. I honestly forgot the expression - it is afro-american I think. I'm sorry but I truly am not sure. I have not been in the USA for so long - about 15 years.

Anyhow I will call her "Hope." Here parents gave her a religious sounding name...

So I have been getting mail from Hope for about 2 years. Recently she told me she has been having flashbacks to times when her mother hit her with a belt.

I would call these "painful memories."

I would call the feelings that come from these flashbacks, these memories, "painful feelings." I would not call them negative. I also do not say to my stomach, when it tells me it feels hungry "Stop being so negative!"

For now, that is all I will say about that.

I "hope" it will give you something to think about.

TFR thanks for reading

[stevehein]

“I lost my taste for rendering judgment on people. I think now I’m more interested in understanding why people are the way they are.”

from
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/ja...ndependent

[stevehein]

Hi Emmeline

I have been listening to depressed, self-harming and suicidal teenagers for about 15 years now. I have developed a lot of beliefs as a result of this which I think are in line with the work you all are doing at MIA.

I am not very good at marketing myself so I wanted to ask you to give me a quick indication of how interested you might be in articles on these topics.

- How compulsory school contributes to teen depression

- Why I do not believe teen depression is an illness, disease or disorder

- How I have helped hundreds of depressed teenagers

- An article called "Its not your brain chemicals, it's your cage." -- This is based on the findings from the rat park experiments.

- Why I do not believe teen depression comes from negative thinking

- Where does so called "negative thinking" come from? - The thesis here would be that it comes come from painful memories, as well as from modeling.

- How emotional abuse causes teen depression, teen suicide

- How to help a depressed teenager

- Why we need to change the laws to give teenagers more control over their lives

- What I learned from listening to depressed teens for 15 years


So those are a few ideas.

To save you time, if you want, you can just reply with a number from 0-10 of how interested you are in these kinds of issues

I have co-authored this book of letters from depressed, and, importantly,emotionally abused, teens

http://eqi.org/letters_from_the_unloved.htm

Thanks and please keep up the good work you are doing.

Steve Hein
http://eqi.org/

[stevehein]

http://www.acesconnection.com/blog/confo...l-thinking

[stevehein]

this is the last draft i have

Once I asked a well-known academic researcher, psychologist and also business consultant in the field of emotional intelligence, David Caruso, why someone would organize others to fly planes into an office building. This was shortly after 911. His answer was, "Because they are evil". I will put a link to a discussion of that below. But for now I just want to say that what Jane is doing with Aces is trying to get a little closer to cause and effect.

For example, thanks to Jane's work Jim Sporleder, a former principal, realized that when a student yells "F you" to him, it didn't mean he was a bad student or he was possessed by the devil or he was "evil" and it didn't mean he needed to be punished with kicking him out of school.

I am trying to peel the onion a bit further back.

I am going deeper than just "trauma" or the limited number of items on the list of Aces. I also don't accept the explanations that teen depression is caused by either A) Brain chemicals or B) negative thoughts.

No, I am convinced there is another, very important, cause of teen depression, teen self-harm and teen suicide.

I will be using the image of the rat cage and the rat park from now on I think. And I will be writing about how we turn the rat cage for teens into a rat park -- where more of their human emotional/psychological and intellectual needs are met.

I don't believe these needs are being met in the average compulsory school anywhere in the world. And I have visited many schools in many countries. I suspect more than anyone else here on Aces. But one thing I am pretty confident about, by the way, is that I have a perspective that literally no one else on Aces has had the opportunity to have. I have an "outsiders" perspective. I am outside the cage. I have left the traditional belief system which includes thinking some kids are just bad kids and need to be punished, locked up etc and the belief that kids won't learn unless we force them to go to school. These are just two examples of beliefs that are widely held, which I do not subscribe to.

So anyhow, I am very passionately interested in truth - in particular truth about cause and effect.

I will be writing more. I welcome questions, encouragement, and support.

Thanks

Steve

[stevehein]

i lost a lot of things in a flood last night.

update. here is what i wrote to someone...
--

i have had a pretty hard last 36 or so hours. my place was flooded and i was there the whole time outside in a canoe (tied to the back of the house) till the water went down enough to force the door open and go back inside. then i went up to the attic - about 3 am.

i lost a lot of stuff. i thought i was pretty prepared but it was a lot higher and a lot faster and more force than i expected. the water got up to about shoulder level inside my house. this morning there was still water in the house till around 2 pm then the floor and every thing was covered with mud.

a real fucking mess.

today we had no elecricity or water. the river totally washed away the water meter so that will probably take the electric company a while to replace.

i didnt want to stay there tonight so i came to the capital, montevideo and got a hostel. then i got in a big argument with some guy who was drunk wanted me to try cocaine! he got really angry for some reason when iasked him if he would like me to use some. he was pressuring me but not saying honestly "i really want you to take some cocaine" -- before that he was telling me to stop talking so much. i was having a really good talk with this guy from brazil about religion, education, punishment etc. now i am at a gas station a few blocks away cuz the guy i was talking to is the receptionist and he called his manager to tell him there was argument and the other guy is drunk.

the guy was really scaring me and i started yelling back. i was afraid he would get physical but i didnt care that much in that moment and i got pretty aggressive verbally - like right up in his face - now my my throat is horse from yelling.

when he came back i tried to apologize and talk but he kept talking in portugese and was still acting hostile. it is especially sad cuz he is the first guy i talked to at the hostel. he said he wanted to practice english. then he brought me a glass of beer and told me to come join the group of brazillians who were talking. and when i told him about the flood he was actually the most empathetic.

which fits my theory that the most sensitive pple are the ones who have to use been, drugs etc to numb their pain if they haven't learned to talk about their emotional needs and their feelings and don't have enough emotional support.

--

as i look back at the conflict about cocaine i remember when i was trying to figure out what to say he just kept saying louder 'why did you ask me ___ (something ) about cocaine, when i asked you if you wanted some.

i am not sure if he was saying why did u ask if i wanted some or he understood my question, but earlier i asked if had tried cocaine and then asked if had tried it in urguay and he got a little defensive for some reason i dont understand. i wonder if he thought i was an undercover cop.

*sigh. it is sad how quickly all that changed. the receptionist was pretty cool about it, saying the guy was so high on beer and wine and maybe pot that he was totally out of his mind.

then the guy was making a lot of noise, banging things so that seems to be the reason the receptionist decided to call his manager.

which seems unnecessary - cuz he probably had to wake him up. he just kind of stood and watched the whole thing.

he told an interesting story i will write about maybe now

[stevehein]

a receptionist from brazil in the che lagarto hostel in montevideo (who now is jw- jehovah's witness) told me this story

once he went home crying and said a boy had hit him. his father pushed him out of the house and said dont come home till u find that boy and hit him and make him cry

we talked about this a bit and i asked how much empathy he felt by his father at that moment and he said zero. then i told him about my theories on empathy - which basically is that to change things we need to be motivated by enough pple having common feelings, common pain

another reason not to give kids/teens anti depressants to numb their pain...

[stevehein]

3:27 AM 4/30/2016
8 i i
ddd


i can hardly see or type

a0e
a00
a0es
a0a
aapes
apes
adult a
ad7
ad7l
adult painful experiences
socks
stream of consi===ciousness
cant fnd
canit
cant find backspace key\\ or enter key\]]\[]\\\]\

changing keyboards 0 changing laptops

one has no net
one has fucked u p screen\\\\\\]
not used to this keyboard
one contact in 0
9
one o9ut

realy fucks things u0 whe n trying t
o
too dark to see keyoboard
now i fixed the light so it is easier
can see enter key
will look for backspace

found it
socks not allowed
on aces

who knows what aces is
who gives a fck
who fi
g
who gives a fuck about my life/
"??
wfaf

wgaf

change thinking
i dont feel cared about
i dont feel valud
need to feel cared about, valuued

not depressed - low on emotional fuel
will make my ownfucking fuel

fuck everyone who has hurt me, punctured me
fuck them
fuck them
fuck them
puntured me my sensitive skin to let out more fucking blood
jane stevens

jane e stevens
aces
runs aces
punctued my skin in several places
a lot of blood came out

took me energy to make new blood
had to rest
hard to rest when fighting to surive the fucking glood and save my things

sr will understand a bit

she knows the most aboutthe flood
a bit about jane stevens

it helps if one person just one fucking person gives a fuck
knows u
accepts u
lets uwrite whatever u want or need to
like alex and his soc
stream of consciousness
sr told me to check it out
she said she was pretty impressed with how the pple of ss responded

now my soc on the other hand? on aces

it was banned
i was banned - it was deleted
thanks jane thanks a lot - sarcasm
i dont like sarcasm
pain
pain
fucking pain
painfuel adult experiences fuck u jane
sorry but you really hurt me
and u dont even know it
and i dont know how to tell u in a way that wont scare the fuck out of u so muchu will never talk to me again

sr doesnt get easily scared
she lets pple write a lot of stuff here that would scare our insecure jane stevens

jane doesnt even know how she feels or what she is afraid of and if i told her that she would feel very very insecure
but almost surely she wouldnot be able to say it


big exhale just then
3:43 AM 4/30/2016

two argentines here. both have been teaching. we had a good talk last night. now they quit their jobs and are riding their bikes to brazil. not sure if she will make it. i like her
and heis ok for an argentine or product of aregentina and south america
but i think he shows and feels almost no empathy to her.
he is thirtyfour she is twentyseven
i need to copythis writing onto a micro sd card and then transfer it to the laptop withthe fucked up screen so i can post it
it is a pain in the fucking ass
i have five fucking laptops
none work 100 percent
one doesnt work at all
an acer
have had bad luck with acerrs or maybe it isnt luck maybethey are just shitty

i feel afraid aboutzero this post will get deleted or i willget banned so thank u soulriser

for creating this space wjhere people like alex and i can write socks

soc's

at aces there are no socks allowed
funny cuz in school i was told i had to wear socks
they never gave me a good reason
later i reqd einstein didnt wear socks
so fuck them
schools and their fucking rules and bullshit caused me so much pain did me so muchdamage
and this was in the land of the free
ie the land of mass fucking propaganda
where people are domesticated, brainwashed taught to support the troops

hurts that braniac said there is nothing wrong with the miligary

he has never lived outside the cult
the cult called the usa

i grew upthere. am so glad i got the fuck out
u really cant see a cult from the inside.u have to leave to see it

kind of like u cant see the forest thu the trees. kind of
but at least maybe u can recognize an individual tree or two but pple can see the propaganda trees. the bushes the plants the seeds even the flowers are propaganda in america

have a great day
as we bomb or drone strike someone else with your tax dollars while telling u over and fucking over to support the troops

support the troops. hmm somethingbothers me about that
do i want to support killing vilonence and desctructino?
americans are so brqinwashed
most would say oh goodness no i dont want to suppor kvand d
but if i say do u support the troops they wil say of course
and then i say but i thought u didnt want to support killing vi and d
then they will just state at me for a moement bfore they come upwith some defense. probbly not one would say, oh wow. hang on. u are right

thank u

nope
pretty fucking unlikely


kvd
kvd in the land of kfc
oops that is more soc
sorry jane
sorry u are so fucking insecure
and religiousor uote spiritual
unquote

[stevehein]

I told one person I wasn't prepared for the flood. He said, "No one was prepared."
This was pretty fucking unhelpful to say.
It showed no empathy. Also, he could have helped me start think about how I could have been more prepared or how I could be more prepared the next time.

I have been thinking about what I learned. One thing I have learned or am reminded of is how slow they are to learn here. Learn and change. For example, most people here feel powerless to change things. So they don't try to. They don't ask them selves, "What did I learn? How can I be more prepared the next time?" Some do, but most don't. They just say "Oh well, these things happen. Let's just hope it doesn't happen again."

The guy I was talking to used to be the president of the commission who runs this place I rent from. It is a campground on the river. It is a non-profit social club. These are very popular here. The government helps subsidize them and will take them over if they are going bankrupt. I have heard there is a lot of corruption in them, which doesn't surprise me much.

Anyhow, the ex-prez could have said, "Hmm. What would have helped you be more prepared?" And I might have said, Well if someone would have told me that a flood was coming and how much rain had fallen upstream and how quickly it fell and how that compares to the last time the water reached my house." He could have then said, "Ah, ok well I know who can help you with that." He was the fucking president. He knows everyone around here. This is a small town surrounded by other small towns. Nearly everyone knows everyone else. I am one of the only outsiders.


It also reminds me of a time in Ecuador when I told someone who was at that time one of my best friends that I felt alone. She said, "Everyone feels alone." That was also pretty fucking unhelpful. I felt worse, not better after she said it. Then she got angry with me because I felt worse and I think she ended up walking away, getting on a bus and leaving me behind. So I felt abandoned on top of feeling alone and not understood or empathized with.

These are two more "Apes" adult painful experiences.

[stevehein]

i googled adult painful experiences and found this


Epiphany

I spoke softly to myself
willing a seat to cushion the shock

all you’ve experienced is
a vivid imagination dream.

you can finally let go -
of childhood and adult painful experiences

they never really happened
It was all a cruel joke

I spoke softly back to myself
shifting to the right of my cushioned seat

all you’ve experienced
that holds weight, truth and love

Is real


=====

this is an example of what i call new age bullshit.

those painful things DID happen.

she got lots of support for her pretty words. one person said she felt comforted or something. reminds me of when my father died and there was a church service in the catholic church he went to. they said walter is looking down from heaven. he is with us -- or some such bullshit. i actually felt a bit comforted by that even tho i know it is bullshit.

so we might say bullshit comforts us.

when reality is too painful.

but usually i prefer reality. helps me understand cause and effect, helps me think about how to prevent more future pain for myself and others.

make believe doesn't help me as much.

[stevehein]

Getting information vs giving empathy

In his 9 hour long audio tape Marshall Rosenberg talks about how it is more helpful in terms of emotional healing, to give empathy rather than to try to get more information.

He gives an example of working with some psychiatrists. His tells them to imagine that a client comes in and says something like "I really don't know if my life is worth living anymore." He asks them to write down an empathetic response to that.

He said most of them could not do it. He said most would ask a question to try to get more information, or more intellectual understanding. For example, they might say, "how long have you been feeling this way" or "what makes you say that".

He said one wrote down "That's ridiculous. You have everything to live for."

Even the other psychiatrists realized that was not at all empathetic. At first the lady who said it felt defensive, but when Rosenberg explained it more she realized he was right and she felt bad because she had been saying things like that to clients, in an attempt to be helpful, for 20 years or something. She also said she realized it would be difficult for a client to tell her that responses like that were not helpful.

Rosenberg doesn't use the term invalidation, btw. But if you are not yet very familiar with it, please read my writing about it on eqi.org.

The link is something like eqi.org/invalid.htm

I won't put the full url in cuz I am still having trouble typing since I have one contact missing. A lot of my contacts were lost during the flood and I haven't gotten around to putting a new one in yet with all the things I have had to do. It was very painful and energy draining in many ways and it happened about one day after I was banned from ACES - I am still thinking about that a lot. Jane Stevens did write me back when I emailed her about it but I haven't replied yet. It has been too hard to decide what to say and I don't feel strong/confident enough yet. I also feel at least a little hurtful/vengeful/sarcastic/resentful etc. So it is not a good base of feelings to work from if I want to have a continued relationship with her - which to a large degree I do want to for these reasons - 1. she is in a position of a lot of influence being in charge of aces. and 2, i kind of forgot haha. but it might be that I'm trying to keep practicing my own theories and not destroy more relationships and lose more people from my life. -- something else which they did not teach me anything useful about at all in school.. btw i have a list of things - some of the many things - they did not teach me in school. the url is something like eqi.org/educ3.htm i think. but if ur motivated it won't be too hard to find or if you look and can't find it i will find it for you. it hurts to think that, realistically, given my experience here on ss, that it is very unlikely anyone or more than one person at best, will be motivated to look up and read the links i have just mentioned. im not sure if sr has even seen the list of things they didn't teach me in school. maybe she has but has forgotten it. she and i haven't talked about it in a very long time, if ever but i bet she came across it once. it helps me to feel valued by her and see her citing my site from time to thyme. i spelled that two ways to call attention to cite and site. english is the only language i have found that spells the same sound two different ways. go figure. oops sorry jane, another steam of consc bit of writing. my bad. *thinks some profanity and labels jane... feeling resentful - but resentful doesn't tell us what i need. feeling pain we could say but that also isn't specific.

so let's list some of my needs again - to feel cared about, valued, important.

moving on to my dream. - last night i drempt i was kind of a group leader of some teens or one of the group leaders.and there was something difficult i wanted them to help me with. there were about 20 teens. the difficult thing was to get a big roll of something down a steep hill. most of the teens just left but a few stayed around to try to figure out how to get it down. i looked away for a while and when i looked back a group of about six had gotten it down by hanging on to it and each other and sliding down with it. they had fun doing it. i didnt offer them any bribe or reward and i didnt threaten them with punishment if they didnt do it. they did it voluntarily, had a good time doing it and felt good when they did it successfully. this is how i believe children and teens are. ie helpful,willing, resourceful,cooperative. and they 'celebrate' their 'successes' naturally. they dont need fucking planned celebrations or rewars - ie self motivated. at least some or enough are.

now moving on to more painful adult experiences or apes - adult painful experiences. when i was young other people's beliefs did not cause me much pain. for example if someone said they were catholic or believed in god it didnt cause me much pain. at first it probably did not cause me any at all. - unlike fire, for example, or food poisoning or going to school which i think was pretty much painful from the first fucking day i was forced to go.

anyhow now as an 'adult' people's beliefs do pain me. like braniac's belief that there is nothing wrong with the military which i interpret as nothing wrong with kvd. killing violence and destruction. not to mention waste and polluting the atmosphere/environment.

also when people believe that their soul chooses which body or family come into or that your thoughts make things happen ie you attract things - like the girl from argentina who said if you think mosquitoes will come and bite you they will - so i asked what if there are 3 of us and only one thinks mosquitoes will come. she said then they will just bite that person.

but there are some problems i have with believing that. for example, most recently, i didnt think my house was going to flood. maybe my neighbors did, but i am pretty sure they didnt either. so i just basically want to say shut the fuck up you stupid mother fuckers when i hear things like that. these are pretty much always people who call themselves spiritual so this might help sr or someone who is not judging me as they read, or feeling judgmental or defensive, even if they aren't consciously aware of it - to understand why the word 'spiritual' is painful to me. kind of like the word america - just too many painful memories, associations/experiences with it.

there are so many apes around me. i am surrounded by them every day. it is hard to fight off the apes alone. help helps.

tfr

it has been awhile since i wrote tfr or since iwrote much at all and sorry again jane for the soc but i have a lot to say and btw what did u need when u read my posts and how were u feeling? u dont know do u?

this is an example of how people are dangerous when they dont know how they feel or what they need. she banned me - hurting me greatly - nearly abetting a suicide - no not nearly, that is a bit of an exaggeration but on some days it would not have been an exaggeration

anyhow she hurt me without even knowing why she was really motivated to ban me.like when my ex brazilian gf who i miss sometimes named bea said you never believe me. she was very agressive about it. literally fighting in a way. but she didnt know what she was fighting for. it took me a while, about one day maybe to realize why she was in so much pain about what i had said. cuz she didnt feel believed and she hadnt for a long time - way before i met her - and so her need was to feel believed by someone - especially the people important to her. so she was fighting for her life - for one of her survival needs but she didnt know that specifically - and thus she could not say. it really hurts when u dont believe me. i have been in so much pain for so long from people not believing me. now my eyes start to water. now i feel so much empathy for her.but at the time i felt attacked and defensive and kind of stunned or paralyzed.

so it matters a hell of a lot to know how u feel, what u need and be able to communicate it clearly and directly. and when u do u will find out even more quickly who gives a fuck about u and ur needs and u will find out almost no one around u does and it might help u, people like music and fruits for example, to understand why u are depressed and in so much constant pain - cuz ur survival needs are not being met and havent been for a very very long time, if ever.

which reminds me of an article by henrique something on psych today - he said something like an illness is when the body is responding or working in a way which is not natural but depression, he said, is a natural response to pain.

thanks henrique. i will find the link late probably or maybe i can find it now

here it is
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the...depression