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419 entries.
wrote on April 22, 2021 at 10:19 pm:
Just wanted to drop by and offer my gratitude for the work you have done and been involved with. Ran onto your videos on youtube feel it a great work. I feel there is a huge need for your sort of work, but alas the need is the silent majority, those in bad and hard situations. We are brothers at arms. Please don't ever become disillusioned or give up the fight, the world needs more people like you, with love, Jeremy.
wrote on April 8, 2021 at 2:20 pm:
Daniel, i love you. Thanks so much in helping with my breakthrough, also, with helping with my 3 beautiful daughters in their grieving. I am a patrion but they are slow in returning an email when you forget your password. Anyways, I love you, thanks for liberating people 🙂
wrote on March 28, 2021 at 10:50 pm:
Thank you for posting your videos. Yes, it's incredibly difficult for a man to talk about being molested (physically or emotionally/psychologically) by his mother. For me the most damaging were physical. I can recall 15 - 20 incidents. Each brief, but just 1 was enough.
But I also recall incidents like you describe. When I had my first and only girlfriend in HS I was 16. I told my mother nothing, somehow knowing on some level that she would sabotage it. I walked my GF home for weeks. After leaving her at her house, on the way home I went by a factory where an older brother worked. He saw me and waved. A couple of days later, in front of my mother, he asked if I took an indirect route home to avoid someone bullying me. I felt trapped and fessed up to having a GF. My mother said "ooh, you have a little girl" and laughed. As if I were a child. Somehow I knew it was over. I just didn't understand why. In the next couple of months she would ask "so how are you and the little girl?" She would ask as if she were talking to a little boy. I broke it off with my GF after about 4 months. I knew better than to have another GF while I still lived at home.
I never had an experience like your description of the pornography story. But it "felt" familiar. She was, and remains, a vile and manipulative human being. She's over 80 years old now and she still manipulates. I see her for what she truly is and have no contact with her. Everyone else sees her as a victim/saint. As you said, the perfect.
I'm glad you brought the issue to light. I've never been able to hold onto a relationship with a woman. And I was 50 years old before finally talking to a professional about my abuse. I'm no longer young. But strangely enough I finally have some hope that I may yet be able to navigate a good relationship.
Thanks again for posting. Every little bit helps.
wrote on March 21, 2021 at 11:42 am:
Hi Daniel, I found your videos on YouTube, and wanted to mention I really appreciate what you are doing! Also, so sorry to hear about your mugging, and the subsequent invalidating remarks you've been subjected to by 'Commenters' trivializing your pain. I understand what that is like, and come from a family which could be the "Poster Child" of trauma and multi-generational dysfunction (so I get that things are not always what they seem to a casual observer). You don't know me obviously, but I really like you! You seem way cool. I hope you are starting to feel better. Send me an email if you are ever in Pittsburgh, I'd like to meet you in real life! Keep on smiling, and grow your hair long again, it looked very cute that way! Lol, sorry, hope I'm not over-stepping to say that!
Admin Reply by: dmackler58
Thanks Carla!
wrote on March 18, 2021 at 10:15 pm:
Opinion on Internal Family Systems? Molyneux seems to really like it and its making a lot of headway. Seems very cognitive and self-empathetic.
wrote on March 15, 2021 at 9:21 pm:
Sherie G.
gr8ideas@fiber.net
Hello.
I live in California near Los Angeles. About 3 years ago I ran across one of your first videos explaining why you left the psychoanalysis field in New York.
Impressive. I learned a lot from watching that and others you have since sponsored.
I am not actually employed in the Mental Health Field, however, I have done a lot of research on the horrible side effects of ECT (Electro Shock Treatment) and the psychotropic drugs given. Including Prozac, Xanax, Ritalin and others.
From my own research I have actually helped people get off of "mood altering drugs", and have helped them return to a normal life, drug free.
My own sources include books I have read by Thomas Szazs, Peter Breggin and others.
Also, Leonard Roy Frank, an ECT survivor in San Francisco has written some telling books on the subject.
Many years ago Thomas Szazs started a group that I have volunteered with - located in Los Angeles.
Citizens Commission on Human Rights. They have a lot of free literature that I have used and/or given out.
I am impressed with your decisions. Continue doing such wonderful work.
Sherie G.
wrote on March 14, 2021 at 8:26 pm:
I once owned a copy of Alice Miller's "The Drama of the Gifted Child." Although I had only read the first chapter I gave it to a friend of mine as a gift a few years ago. Then, this February, my father (drug addict, narcissist, comedian, and guitarist) fell victim of a violent crime which left him in critical condition for a week. Doctors were uncertain of his fate in the beginning. Fortunately, he has recovered physically. During this time I felt a need to retrieve that copy of Alice Millers book. It popped into my brain during this emotional storm. I just knew I had to have the book. I found a local bookstore and found a copy of "The Drama of the Gifted Child" once again. I read all of it that night. Feeling mostly empowered and validated I still felt a creeping need to verify Alice Miller's work. That's when a google search of feedback and updates on her material brought me to Daniel Mackler's writings, essays, and a critique of her material. I have since been journaling everyday and trusting the difficult journey inward. I suffer from the need to please everyone else, sacrificing my own autonomy and agency. This creates ample opportunity for increasing resentments and poor choices. Among other shortcomings, I am happy to say that I finally feel like there is some hope in enduring my life-- warts and all. I couldn't be more thankful to have found another humans voice that taps into the many things I've always thought and felt but couldn't describe or even allow myself to describe. I appreciate the honesty, vulnerability, and willingness to share the gems of what makes us human. Thank you.
wrote on March 9, 2021 at 5:27 pm:
Hi Daniel,
I've already commented recently on your welcome page. Hope it's okay to write another one here.
First, just watched your video on being mugged. I'm very glad you're okay. What a thoughtful, good way you responded to the two young men by allowing for your common humanity to manifest in the context of their otherwise dehumanizing act.
Second, I have three questions about what might be called the anatomy or architecture of trauma. (If you do wish to respond to these questions, please don't rush on my account under the circumstances you're in; I express this now while the spirit moves me, not with any expectation for you to respond).
Before I ask the questions explicitly, let me try to set the context, which has to do with a central theme of yours, namely the root of trauma in childhood experience, particularly people's childhood experience of having their sense of themselves shut down by their parents (who were likely acting out of unresolved trauma from their own childhoods). You've also pointed out that society beyond the family unit is a potential source of trauma (e.g., in the excessive authority and thereby de facto freedom to traumatize that parents often have over the children, who are often not believed, for example, when they report their parents). And you've also pointed out, or effectively revealed, that formal education can itself be a source of trauma (e.g., insofar as the field of psychotherapy is more preoccupied with profit than helping people equally,or insofar as the field de-emphasizes the significance of trauma in order to placate professionals who have their own unresolved traumas).
My first question: are the above three sources of trauma (i.e., parents, parent-centric society, and profit-oriented/trauma-placating professionalism) a kind of perverse trinity? That is, are they three dimensions of the same phenomenon of trauma, meaning that an authentic triad of parents-society-professionalism is necessarily part of trauma's resolution (allowing that these terms can be played out in unconventional ways, for instance by recognizing the role of an authentic parent in people who aren't necessarily one's official parents)?
My second question: if the above line of thought has any truth to it, is it not possible, if only in theory, for a particular experience of trauma to be explained by one of the dimensions - or by one combination of them - more so than any other?
For example, could one be traumatized not by one's parents per se, but by the broader parent-centric society? To elaborate on this theoretical example: say one's parents do a beautiful job of validating and fostering one's identity, only for a school system to indoctrinate one into believing that parents, whether good or bad or some mixture, by default have the primary say in their children's development (e.g., by a teacher not believing a student's reason for missing a class unless a parent has signed an explanatory note, which could be a traumatic experience if, say, for instance, the reason has to do with a terrible accident involving the student's parents, rendering them unable to write a note).
Or, to give one more theoretical example, say one's parents and one's society have been nothing but nurturing, yet the formal knowledge that one studies suggests otherwise. To extend this example: say one well on the path to enlightenment until, for some reason, one becomes enthralled by Jordan Peterson in a university setting and thereby believes in his approach to parenting, overlooking its authoritarian implications (which you do a splendid job of critiquing by the way)?
In short, it seems to me, that one can have good parents and live in a bad society with bad forms of education in it; or one can have good parents and live in a good society but get a bad formal education; just as one can luck out in all three areas, and so on and so forth.
So, third question: am I confusing issues or is there any truth to my meanderings?
wrote on March 2, 2021 at 5:34 pm:
Hi Daniel,
it was good watching your videos and agree with alot of what you say. I really need help though and don\t know who to talk to, to help my daughter, she is on olanzepine, seroquel and ativan, becoming manic and i am scared which way things will go. I don't know what to do and don't want her back in hospital or on a treatment order, it all doesnt help
do anyone, a therapist similar to how you were, here in Toronto? or anyone online that can help?
Admin Reply by: dmackler58
hi Susan,
Here is one possibility: https://www.madinamerica.com/provider-directory/
Also, perhaps: https://www.theinnercompass.org
Wishing you the best!
Daniel
wrote on February 24, 2021 at 10:25 pm:
Hi Daniel. Wanted to know if there are any hubs for therapists who have the same convictions as you. I wanna find a good one instead of endlessly sifting through the bargain-bins of pill-pushers and mystics. Its taking so long and has sucked a lot of the drive out of me searching for that one therapist.
I would appreciate if you could point me towards any database of some kind, or some rubric of how to find a good one (I've also watched your YT vid on it). Maybe one day you or others could create a website or app that centralizes actual therapists, like Psychology Today but without the pop-psychology and pills.
Thanks for fighting the good fight.
Admin Reply by: dmackler58
Perhaps www.madinamerica.com has a listing of such therapists...
I just checked and found this: https://www.madinamerica.com/provider-directory/
However, I have a lack of faith of people on lists... Often ending up on a list is just good marketing -- and who knows how they really are as therapists!
Greetings--Daniel
wrote on February 18, 2021 at 6:22 am:
There are u tubes on how adult orphans cope when they have been bereaved. But how does an adult orphan come to terms with the loss of their parents and family system if parents were severely personality disordered (narcisistic) and you were abandoned, scapegoated and disguarded when you woke up a realised the lie, they dump. How to cope with the final dumping after a last confrontation which was futile in the first place. How to rebuild if your family were migrants and there is no extended family to lean on and you are literally alone in terms of family. Also to make worse people say you're an adult you shouldn't care anymore or need family as 40.
wrote on February 17, 2021 at 8:01 am:
Hello Daniel: I have just recently found your website and looked a little bit into your work and your approach to your life. The ideas and comments really resonate with me as a parent of 3 adult sons.
My middle son has fairly recently decided to distance himself (essentially stop all communication) from my husband and me. He is married and his wife has had breast cancer which has resulted in their not being able to have children. I am sure this is extremely painful for him. I unfortunately commented on his simultaneous very significant weight gain which could certainly damage his health. Since expressing that concern, the door has shut and no communication is accepted or acknowledged Has been a couple of months and could go on indefinitely I suppose. I am trying to prepare for that potential reality.
I just wanted to tell you it is so helpful to watch your video and read about your life and your "advice" for parents who have to face up to a child deciding to pull away from a parental relationship.
As I look back at my own background ,weight and appearance were a constant theme in my family of origin which in retrospect was not a healthy approach to living one's life.
Wish you the best in your work and will keep following!!
Best. Phyllis
Admin Reply by: dmackler58
Thank you Phyllis. I am wishing you and your family all the best. Daniel
wrote on February 11, 2021 at 10:35 pm:
Dear Mr Mackler,
Intellectuals/intellectualism, the condescending know it alls, or the psuedo know its alls..I'm curious about your take on them, I was one. My forte was philosophy, the self absorbed existential kind with the cynical, nihilistic ruminating about the meaning of it all. Turns out, therapy (psychology) answered all my philosophical questions. Growing up with both parents having personality disorders left me very empty inside and all the insecurities of inadequacy drove me to overcompensate by over intellectualizing everything when the only intellectualizing I had been doing all all along was around buried feelings. To sit and feel them has been so redemptive that the narrative in my journals/diaries nowadays is pretentiously poetic as opposed to pretentiously academic. All the flowery language i find I cant help but use is an authentic expression of an exuberant empathy for life itself...anyways, I was wondering if you could, kindly, make a video in the future on your take on intellectualizing, I'm sure it would be just as insightful as every other subject you vlogged on, thanks, sincerely, your fan and student, frank
Admin Reply by: dmackler58
That sounds like a good idea, Frank! Thank you. Daniel
wrote on January 14, 2021 at 12:52 pm:
Interesting stuff about sexual orientation. If there was an intervention to make someone bisexual or pansexual would that be acceptable?
wrote on January 5, 2021 at 12:56 pm:
Hi Doc Mac,
I've seen your videos on YouTube and love your perspective. I've had the "there's something wrong with me" idea in my head for as long as I can remember. My parents were great, but not perfect. I've figured out some major issues recently that caused several decades of depression. I'm in a trauma WRAP program now. I had to push for that, since I was diagnosed with BPD vs. CPTSD. I finally made it clear the issue was trauma, not my personality.
I'm 52, I'll be 53 in September. I've always felt different. Like an alien dropped off on the planet and left here. I am SO different from other people - I've never fit in. I get what people say when they say a diagnosis helps! You're looking for a label that will explain WHY you feel like an outsider looking in on everyone living life! I've spent a lot of time trying to get that idea OUT of my head. Then I saw your video today.
Sometimes we need to hear it from someone else. Not just an expert, but someone, like you, who is unique - who tells the TRUTH about the world, and about TRAUMA!!
I also listened to your video about finding a good therapist - which confirmed that a few of my therapists were crappy.
The experts who really got me rolling when I started researching were Robert Whitaker (Anatomy of An Epidemic) and Peter Breggin (Your Drug May Be Your Problem). Between the two of them, I figured out no, I don't have bipolar, and most, if not ALL mental illness is caused by trauma. Plus psych meds are VERY toxic to the human brain.
I appreciate your honesty about how painful trauma work is. People need to know. If they aren't ready, it will break them. I'm mentally strong as heck. Emotionally I'm a wreck, but I know I can deal with anything mentally.
Thank you. These words are not enough, but will have to be. Thank you for saying that there isn't anything wrong with us, any of us. There isn't, but SO many people NEED to hear it! I NEEDED to hear it! I know the world is crazy - but it took me SO long to figure it out.
I hope for a time when every child who is different, like I was, like you were, isn't told they are "wrong" and isn't rejected by society, peers, in every life situation. This rejection is HORRIBLE and HURTS people. There is NO need for it.
We need to EMBRACE our differences and rejoice in diversity! We are too afraid of change to do that. Humanity loves the status quo. Or.... the powerful love it - and they oppress everyone who doesn't FIT in their model.
Of course I don't fit. Anyone who questions authority doesn't. I abhor authority. I don't think there's any legitimate reason for ANY person to have authority over another. Which makes me an anarchist.
Oh.... well, that's a big problem in American, lol.....
wrote on December 13, 2020 at 12:15 am:
Hi Daniel. I was just wondering how you've been. We spoke a few times in the past at events in NYC. I appreciate your work you have done and enjoyed speaking with you in the past. I have been free from psychiatry/mental health system for some time now and live in The City myself now. That move alone probably saved my life. Thanks and be well.
wrote on December 4, 2020 at 11:43 am:
Thank you for generously sharing your knowledge about childhood trauma and how that is linked to mental health. You'r so straightforward and truthful.
I noticed that a lot of your information is quite similar to what I hear from Divine Truth so I thought I'd share with you:
https://youtu.be/OxvyBKZv5oE
Thanks,
Helena
wrote on November 30, 2020 at 6:15 pm:
Interesting stuff you have written. What do you think there is still to learn about sexual orientation?
wrote on November 22, 2020 at 7:21 pm:
I had been diving down the rabbit hole of my family's deep dark secrets and avoidance of trauma for a few years now, but your videos are very much like talking about it with a very understanding friend. Thank you for sharing your life and your work with us.
wrote on November 20, 2020 at 5:28 am:
Hey, just want to thank you a lot because of your video's on your youtube channel.
It inspired me a lot. Keep on doing the good stuff!
wrote on October 31, 2020 at 4:47 pm:
Hi
I was stunned to hear your video on your journey to growth. I nodded all the time. It was like you were talking of me. I started my journey with a psychotherapist that in the beginning helped me a lot, then there was a major change in him and I "met"upon his trauma. He said it all was in me. Very very dangerous , it nearly ended with the worst case senario. It has been a struggle back to life , but paradoxically because I had started my journey, it didnt collapse. I have noone that has traveled these roads in them selves and that is hard. I understand why you called it , gold , finding someone. Thank you. Gina
wrote on October 28, 2020 at 11:21 am:
Infant circumcision is Blackout Sociopathy. It is Nazism for newborns. The movie 'Conspiracy' demonstrates the meeting process at places like AAP, hospitals, etc.
Author-Jesus & the Unabomber
wrote on October 26, 2020 at 6:02 am:
Hi Daniel . Thank You for what you do with . Speaking Out . for the Vulnerable & Disadvantaged that's Awesome ! Would it have been possible to covert movie film the Tragedy of Lives for those detained as Staff . I found that my Mobile Phone was confiscated . my room searched . other Patients found also conversations listened to from Staff & any mention of recording was responded to with the Patients mobile phone being confiscated . Staff & the Conditions were blocked from being reported to the outside world . Notices were put on the wall banning bringing in & the use of Laptop Computers because as staff manageress said " don't like issues being reported on social media "
wrote on October 18, 2020 at 6:12 pm:
Hi. I love what goes on. I honestly find psychiatry to be satanic witchcraft. I wish i can tell you more about it.
wrote on October 16, 2020 at 9:49 am:
Hi Daniel, I listen to your videos a lot, and you even inspired me to make my own (although I don't have the knack of it yet - getting there).
I am a Certified Substitute Teacher, currently out of work because of Covid 19 and life devastation - also hold a BA in Psych and partial MS in Education/Special Education. I also started an MS in Clinical Counseling once, but dropped it due to the system I cannot believe in.
I'm a musician as well - and just enjoy your perspective.
wrote on October 12, 2020 at 5:21 am:
another person who makes me feel more sane is douglas rushkoff
wrote on October 12, 2020 at 5:20 am:
feeling rough in this era, you´re one of those who make me feel less insane. thank you
wrote on September 29, 2020 at 5:36 am:
Daniel every week I check your YouTube channel and watch what you have posted. You are the human being on this earth I most look forward and enjoy listening too. You make me feel normal and okay you make me want to keep living. Thank you for everything for the expression of you and the divine spark of life and the soul that you are best wishes Kate
Admin Reply by: dmackler58
Thanks Kate!!! -Daniel
wrote on September 28, 2020 at 11:19 pm:
Hi Daniel. I just wanted to express some gratitude for your documentaries and videos, which I devoured last summer as though I hadn't had a bite to eat in years. They felt like the first deeply relatable thing I'd come across since becoming an adult. I'm 22 and was becoming increasingly numb and schizoid until I figured out to look back at my foggy history, and to dig up my deep feelings about my parents and childhood. Well on the path now - feeling more alive every month. Cheers! - Darius
Admin Reply by: dmackler58
Thank you Darius! -Daniel
wrote on September 18, 2020 at 4:41 am:
Hi Daniel
I saw your video about the reasons for leaving psychotherapy. I know what you mean. Although I am a startup of this profession now. I consult in Russia. It's different from USA. Trere is no lisence for psychotherapy work. But this is what you said about responsibility to Customers. We can't get out of head that we've heard . I worry about everyone. I'm learning to detach, but not to get stale. But for each person, we become a part of Life, just as each Client brings their own into the life of the therapist.
Irwin Yalom is not afraid to be a friend to Clients. I understand you when you say that Customers also give support. I think you were a great psychologist. It is a pity that this attitude to the profession often brings burnout.
I think it must be great to be friends with you. You have a lot of sincerity and openness. There is a lot of romanticism in this. It doesn't save the world. But it is definitely necessary for the world.
Thank you.
Let everything work out in the best possible way.
As they say in yoga - Namaste
Natali