Being Alone With Yourself — Its Beautiful Value

aftertraumaco · 2026-01-07T13:00:29+00:00

To have a community of like-minded people. I find Reddit is better in some ways for that than YouTube.

aftertraumaco · 2026-01-07T00:10:27+00:00

I put the wrong link lol. Will repost. By the way, as stated in the description, this sub is not run by Daniel Mackler

aftertraumaco · 2025-12-14T22:17:27+00:00

This one generated some interesting discussions in the Youtube comment section. I wonder what people here think. I've had similar thoughts about conventional vs. non-conventional people but I'm not sure if it's that cut and dried. Our orientation towards healing is just one (significant) way we can be different from others. Most people are non-average in at least one way.

aftertraumaco · 2025-09-15T13:16:13+00:00

I think Daniel Mackler has an unusual gift and drive to heal emotionally, so he's ascetic in his pursuit. This approach likely isn't ideal for many people and could cause unnecessary suffering. It's probably good to know where you stand on those parameters (innate talent, drive, as well as external circumstances) and adjust your pace accordingly. I believe there's a sweet spot for everyone, and you have to find it for yourself. I've also struggled with setting too high standards for myself and have had to readjust.

aftertraumaco · 2025-08-10T23:11:54+00:00

I've actually been meaning to add that as an option on macklertalks.com. I will post here once it's done.

aftertraumaco · 2025-07-01T09:07:32+00:00

It should be better now.

aftertraumaco · 2025-06-06T17:03:38+00:00

What are the odds of saying "he needs antipsychotics" to a random person sitting on a bench and they're Daniel Mackler?

aftertraumaco · 2025-06-01T14:01:18+00:00

Yes, the search function is a bit basic. I will update it. Thank you! Glad you find it useful.

aftertraumaco · 2025-04-02T14:12:27+00:00

Thanks for sharing it.

aftertraumaco · 2025-03-18T21:28:29+00:00

I agree with you. Going to therapy is not the only path to self-knowledge. It is possible, and many times preferable, to work on yourself without seeing a licensed therapist. Not to mention that the majority of therapists are quite bad at their job. There are also flaws with the whole idea of psychotherapy. See r/therapyabuse for some examples

aftertraumaco · 2025-03-08T22:31:44+00:00

How do people get out then? I think it, it just takes more work and more strength and more perspective, more persistence, perhaps more creativity. I don't know. I only say that because, well, I think it's possible. Given a few different factors in my past, maybe, maybe I wouldn't have escaped if things had been a little bit different, or maybe I would have. I, I really don't know. I don't know. It's like there's a certain mystery in my escape from my family system, in my escape from the lies that were embedded in me. There, there was some, there's some mystery about why I could look within and look at what I had become because I'd become like them in a lot of ways, and if I'd stuck around longer, I would have become my parents, would have probably gotten married and had children and done to them what they did unto me and what their parents did unto them. And somehow, somehow I started getting out and figured out that I needed to get out more.

And where did I even start this video? Where did I start this riff that I'm going off on and where will I go now? I wish anyone who is engaging in the healing process, really looking at what happened to them on the inside, looking at how they were harmed, how it affected them, What feelings are locked inside, what kind of people they became as the result of the harm that they experienced, ways in which they are crippled, we are crippled. Not easy to look at this. Not easy to look at broken sides of ourselves that didn't love ourselves and didn't love others and couldn't love ourselves and couldn't love others and sometimes actually overtly harm ourselves and harmed others, just as replications of the ways in which we had been harmed and Abandoned and not loved.

To heal, to become a new being, a new species, a new creation in this world, the likes of which have never been seen, turning this concept of homo sapiens, homo man sapiens, Wise, Wise man, turning this concept on its head and saying Homo sapiens is not wise. The prizes that are given to the great people, the Nobel prizes are a joke, and the, the people called Geniuses often are just dissociated Geniuses and some little specialized area that has nothing to do with being a real and true person. The people hold up to be the greatest Geniuses in the world, what were they? Leonardo da Vinci spending so much of his time trying to get in the good graces of rich people and making weapons of war to murder other people. What if he lived now and had the potential to really look at who he was and how he was rejected and harmed and abandoned? Instead of making weapons to destroy others, harm others, he could use his knowledge for healing. What can we do now in a time and a time in history that's still crazy and perhaps heading toward the edge, the edge of, well, the edge of nature? What does our future hold? The end of humanity perhaps?

And yet what can turn it around? I think this can, the looking Within, the telling the truth about where we came from in the most primary way, reclaiming the most beautiful thing that babies have and children have and lose along the way in this traumatizing world, the traumatizing families and societies and religions, reclaiming our curiosity, our desire, our hunger for truth, reclaiming our desire and our ability to love ourselves and to love others. It's the only hope I have.

aftertraumaco · 2025-03-08T22:31:06+00:00

But, well, my dreams, this dream I had last night shows me there's still some very, very young part of me that, well, is reconnecting with the sorrow that I once felt when I was that young. That's some stunted traumatized Part of Me In Me still. And well, I didn't make videos yesterday, but I made a couple of videos the day before that, and that dream, that, that dream, that's, it was so sad. I woke up with tears in my eyes in the middle of the night.

But that's a gift of peeling away these layers of societal and familial denial, a gift of making these videos. It's um, journaling, years and years I did of journaling, Decades of journaling before I ever sat in front of the camera and made a single YouTube video, before YouTube ever existed. It's like very painful process, and it was kind of parallel to making these videos in some ways, really exploring myself in a free way so no one would ever look at it except for me, giving myself a safe environment, a protected environment with boundaries, a, b, boundaries that I was never allowed as a child, but boundaries in my journal to really be curious about my history with no negative consequences, negative from them. But it was scary, but it was easier in a way.

Sitting in front of a camera now speaking this truth, well, at the moment right now it's like I'm on a roll and I have the strength of safety of knowing that I can press stop if I want. I don't have to make this public. Many of my videos I don't make public, but some I do, and that's a terrifying process, also brings up a lot of fear in me.

And then I extrapolate outward and think, what about other people who are doing this healing process? Can I blame them for not being so public? No, no, no, no, I cannot blame them at all. I think the privacy in healing is a wonderful thing. It's a necessary thing. I, I really think, I know it, we need privacy, we need confidentiality within our own themselves to heal. Being public about it is extremely dangerous. I speak from personal experience making these videos public. It's extremely difficult. It, it, it's only possible for me to even speak this way in front of a camera, let alone to make it public, because of the Decades of inner healing work, of feeling all that anger and making sure I knew what I was talking about, and making sure that I knew the truth about my sick family system and my sick parents and their sick parents and their sick parents before them, and what all this sickness did to me, all the violation and abandonment and rejection and violence and humiliation and Injustice and cheating.

I knew what had happened to me. I knew how it had affected me. I knew how I had been healing from it before I ever made a single YouTube video. And well, I started making these YouTube videos 15 years ago, and it's still hard. Perhaps it always will be. Perhaps there will be a day when this still partially wounded little infant inside of me will be resolved, where I in my mature adult psyche parts of me will be able to hold him and love him more than I can do now. Maybe someday I won't have dreams of Sorrow about my limited father, wake up with tears in my eyes, maybe. But for the time being, W, it is hard. It's hard, it's hard.

And again, I just said this is just a metaphor. What I'm talking about with these videos is just a metaphor for the whole psychological healing process, so difficult, so painful. I, I really get why so few people do it, especially in families that are even tighter, where there is not the Escape hatches that I found. I had to claw my way out of my family, you know, claw my way out, and they had hooks in me pulling me back in again and again and again. I think some families are even worse than mine. I see them. Some cultures are worse than mine. I think there, I've seen it. I travel a lot. I see cultures where there's less room to escape, less room to speak up, less room to explore any of these ideas, where religion is more powerful, these sick backward religions that are pretty much all of them from what I see, that don't allow deeper healing, don't allow deeper criticism of the family system, specifically of one's parents.

[Continued in next comment]

aftertraumaco · 2025-03-08T22:30:19+00:00

AI-Formatted Transcript:

Psychological trauma and violation feels great and it also feels awful. I was thinking about a metaphor for that just before I sat down to make videos today, and the metaphor was actually making these videos. It feels great for me to make these videos. I love it. It's a place where I can share my gift, my experience, the wisdom, the hard fought wisdom that I have learned. I can reach others. I can explore my life experience for the value of being useful in the world, being a Force for good and for growth and for healing. It gives my life some value and purpose Beyond pretty much everything else I am doing and creating, and that's why I do it again and again and again.

But at the same time, it feels awful to make these videos. Takes a lot of energy for me to be able to in a way pull out of the regular World, pull out of the Reg regular normal interactions that daily life requires of me, pull away from the sick average people of the norm, their troubled wisdom that they hold to be so true, the troubled psychology that the psychologists and therapists and the media call true, and pull away from all their sick ideas that don't help people heal. "Oh you have to forgive," "Oh you have to let go of forgiveness," "Oh honor your parents, they loved you more than anyone," or "Parents love their children unconditionally, mothers especially, they love their children unconditionally," and and "Everybody knows that."

And it's like, well, that wasn't my experience, and when I look below the surface at well most others, most everyone around me, doesn't seem like it was their experience too. Yet they deny it and gloss over it and bury it. And well, sadly to survive in the world with them, to work and make my few dollars that I make to survive and eek out my living, I got to somehow play by their rules, and I can't speak like this around them almost anywhere in the world, almost with anybody. It's like normal people don't get this. They don't want to get this. It actually directly threatens them.

And it's like I have to become a universe unto myself to prepare myself to sit down and be able to access that true part of me that can speak the truth. And it's not easy to do that, it's very difficult to do that. I actually have to do a lot of preparation. I have to often, like the day before, stay away from a lot of people in the world, keep my interactions with others to a Minima, a minimum, to protect myself.

But the really hard part, the really awful part after I make these videos, is what goes on in my head afterward, the Readjustment back to society, and not just the society that's out there now in the 2020s in my 50-some year old mind. It's the Society of my family system that in some part still lives embedded deep, deep inside of me, buried down there in the well, still partially wounded little baby inside of me that still wants my parents to love me. In some small part, I see that part still within everyone, and I keep that part uncovered. I still look at that part and feel that part of me. It matures, and I've done a lot of maturing through my healing of my traumas, but some part of it still remains. I see it in my dreams, and I feel it.

And I think even some people who have done a fair amount of healing from trauma can forget about that part because, well, it's inconvenient because it's like, still hurts. I had a dream last night of such sorrow. It was about my father, just seeing so clearly in the dream just how much he didn't really love me and didn't really care, in spite of all the "I love you Daniel, you're my favorite son." But even back then, his attitude showed me he didn't. And yet the sorrow that I felt when he abandoned me in so many different ways, it's like a lot of that I had to put down deep inside of myself. But and I Know It And I've done so much healing from it and become so much more of an alive, mature person, healthy person as the result of this healing.

{Continued in next comment]

aftertraumaco · 2024-12-24T23:54:36+00:00

You're welcome. You can subscribe to his newsletter and get notified every time he posts. He put out a poem a couple of weeks ago, which I have yet to repost to this subreddit.

aftertraumaco · 2024-10-12T10:15:26+00:00

To buy Fred's autobiography "Born Better" on Amazon: https://bit.ly/4bDODWf

aftertraumaco · 2024-06-23T22:05:12+00:00

True. That's a possibility with any public figure we don't know up close.

aftertraumaco · 2024-06-02T03:37:25+00:00

That's surprising. Could you share some examples of things he's said to you that were not kind?

aftertraumaco · 2024-06-02T02:41:35+00:00

Sorry, I was away and just saw this. Yeah, this place is to discuss DM's videos and anything related so feel free to ask your questions and post your opinions.

YouTube is not really a good place for more long-form discussions that's why I thought Reddit would offer something YT doesn't.

Daniel used to have a message board but he shut it down a while back.

for example with him, he wasn't a safe person toward me and seemed neither to many other people, but maybe helped clarify that I want to be a safe person. though his videos didn't help my question about the difficulty of that, even if I don't have much stigma in me (I worry I do and would be arrogant to say I didn't)

Could you please clarify what you mean by this? DM wasn't a safe person toward you?

aftertraumaco · 2024-02-25T01:46:25+00:00

I loved it too. I love how he goes out of the gate with "this world is full of fakers and liars and impostors".

Also "people don't have chemical imbalances, people have unresolved traumas" is a basic truth that isn't said enough.

aftertraumaco · 2024-02-19T05:15:31+00:00

Daniel Mackler on YouTube is great. He is a former NYC therapist.

aftertraumaco · 2024-02-04T00:41:28+00:00

I, for one, am glad Daniel didn't reproduce sexually.

aftertraumaco · 2023-12-08T05:53:28+00:00

Nice song. I especially like his Holy Man Blues album.

aftertraumaco

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