Ann and Terry
Terry, would stop nodding. Stop nodding!
Why, I want to nod.
Why do you?
Because, to show you that I’m listening, that I’m paying attention.
Yes but I can see you are. So why do you do it?
Because I want to - I feel to. And other than that, I don’t know, it’s what you do.
Yes okay, it’s okay to nod if that’s how you genuinely feel you want to nod, but that’s all so long as it’s for you - it’s what you want to do, and so you’re doing it for yourself. But you give me the feeling that you’re not doing it for yourself, but for me. And that’s what I’m objecting to.
Doing for you and not me?
Yes, it’s your programming, you being the good obedient boy, and the part that shows it’s really just a habit is when I’ve stopped talking and look at you, you nod, and nod a few times. So I know it’s for me that you’re nodding and you’re not just doing it for yourself. And you’re not really giving it to me because you love me and want me to know that you are loving everything I’m saying, paying so close attention to every word that leaves my mouth. You’re only nodding because if you don’t you believe you’ll get into trouble. So can you feel that within yourself?
No. But there is something within me, and I should be nodding, look - I’m nodding, that thinks what you are saying is plausible, so I can accept that, as I’m sure most of my behaviour, if not all of it, as we’ve been seeing more of lately and have been seeing these past years, is all habitual and programmed and a consequence of my bad parenting. So okay, I am an insincere nodder, so what can I do about that?
Nothing, like all of these things, it’s not that you’re now meant to stop nodding, even if you could make yourself, but you just have to keep trying to feel why you nod in that way, trying to get more in touch with those underlying feelings, which as we know, will give rise hopefully to your programming and why you were made to be that way. And then you will feel bad, because again it’s taken you away from your true self and it prevented you from freely forming and nodding because you felt you genuinely wanted to nod; and then you will hate your parents more, being more angry with them, which in turn will make you feel even worse, and so hate them even more. You know, that’s how it works.
Yeah, don’t remind me. Now I feel self-conscious, but shit I can feel that I want to nod all the time, even to every word you say - do I nod that much?
Yes, you’re almost a perpetual nodder. And if you’re not nodding you’re saying yes the same way or yeah, or you’re doing both at the same time. And when you’re doing that, then I can tell you’re not actually paying attention at all, you’re off in your mind somewhere else. So I can keep a gauge on how well you are paying attention to me because you give yourself away if you’re not.
So what you’re saying is that I’ve got to learn how to look at you, nod and say yes, all whilst I go off in my mind thinking about what I want, blocking you out.
Well yes, if that’s really how want to be with me. If you don’t want to have any relationship with me at all - if you want to reject me without my knowing and pretending that you’re still here with me; if you hate me that much that really you can’t bear listening to me but for some reason you still have stay with me and pretend that you do like me.
Fuck Ann, that in so many ways feels like how it was, how it still is at times, with mum and dad, particularly when they start telling me how I should be. I can see myself, even feel myself now, nodding away, saying yes, showing them I’m listening and paying attention, but it’s just a show, as really I’m off thinking about the cricket or you or anything else. And now I can also see and admit that really I can’t bear them going on at me like that, and yes, I do want to reject them, fuck them off and tell them to shut up and to stop it and to stop treating me so badly - so unlovingly, but I can’t. So I have to put on the show and they are none the wiser. All because they’ve trained me to be that way. So they’ve trained me to ignore them, reject them, even hate them, yet all the while pretending that I am listening and love listening to them. Fuck it’s all such a sham.
Yes. You were inducted well and truly into your part in the ‘family play’ and so that’s how you are, it’s how we all are, so far as I can see.
All right then I’ll try and feel what I feel when I nod, so you talk and I’ll nod.
No, I can’t just do that-
That’s enough, as one thing I can already feel is how hard it is for me not to nod. I feel like I’m going to blow up, I have to nod. But then if I nod more, on purpose, then I feel like my head is going to fall off. But I can see what you’re saying and I can feel how I do it, and yes it’s getting stronger how much I do it just to block them out, as a front really to pretend I’m there with them but really I’m not. So as you said Ann, that means that really I’m just there with them in my own family, like my body is, but my mind, and me Terry, the real me are not there.
Yes that’s right.
So fuck that, how do you have good and true and loving relationships like that?
You can’t.
So I’ve never had them.
No.
Shit, I can see it more clearly, and what a thought. I know I’ve seen that before, but as with all this growing in increasing awareness of yourself, you come at from a different angle and you see it even more clearly. So none of my relationships have been true - that much we know, but now I feel I really know it, or know it more.
Yes, that’s right, and how can they be if we’re all evil and in our negative states, if we’re all so busy doing all we can to reject each other and not relate truly, all putting on our false fronts and shows of pretence for each other.
I see what you mean. So then who really are we relating to?
I don’t know, possibly just fantasy people we make up for ourselves.
So the mum and dad I’m relating to are really in some way a fantasy mum and dad... hmmm... and so that then would apply to everyone.... even you?
That’s right. We’re not true and so we’re not truly relating to the true us in each other. And that’s what I was trying to point out by bringing your false nodding to your attention. That really you’re not truly connecting with me, we’re missing, and we’re connecting with false or fantasy images of each other. And possibly even further, we’re just trapped in ourselves relating to ourselves with none of it actually having to do truly with the other person at all. It’s all what we’re doing to ourselves.
So I’m completely wrapped up in myself?
Yes. Projecting your fantasy me and yourself onto me and yourself, as you’re not true in any of it. So you’re even totally wrapped up in your own fantasy you, not even in the real or true you.
Gee what a thought - eh? I should be reeling with bad feelings. It’s mind-boggling. But I can see what you mean - see, more nodding, nodding, nodding-
Good boy Terry.
Thank you, I’m a good nodder.
Yes, you have to keep making sure you praise yourself, because no one else is going to.
No! More shit to work through. Anyway, so me now sitting here talking to you, is really a fantasy or contrived me that my parents have created, and I guess with my own help to some degree; and I’m talking to another contrived person you and your parents have created, that being whom I call Ann, but really I’m off in fantasy-land and non of it is probably real at all.
That’s right, and how can it be when it’s negative, when it’s all denying our true state and all our true feelings.
And from that I can see, we can’t trust any of our feelings, can we, as really they are based on falseness and untruth and all the fantasy we’re creating too.
Yes, that’s right, it can’t be any other way.
So we’re all mad, it’s all mad and we’re all mad.
Yes, and that’s how I feel a lot of the time.
Yeah well trying to grasp it with my mind makes me feel like I’m going mad.
But you’re already mad Terry, so there is nowhere to go. Which is what this is all about, that we can’t go anywhere, that we’ve already gone off, right off, off into our own minds and their creations. And so we have to stop and just allow ourselves to be here, now, in our madness, in our fucked states of mind and feelings, all whilst we seek the truth of our madness; all whist we strive to uncover the truth of our self-rejection, and doing it through those feelings we have - mostly our bad feelings. Which of itself is an incredible thing, in that we can do that, we can use our bad feelings, feelings which might also be coming from our corrupt minds; but we can still use them to work our way back deeper into ourselves, if we choose to stop and not keep going on as we are.
Or maybe it’s that our bad feelings, the ones we are using to uncover the truth of ourselves, are still true and that’s why we are burying and refusing to allow ourselves to have them. So all the feelings we have, that we accept, are just part of the false mind-created ones.
Possibly. I don’t know.
And another thing you do Terry-
Oh god... all right-
Is that when I talk and if you are looking at me, you have to keep looking at me, but if I look away and then back at you, you’re no longer looking at me, giving me again the feeling that you’re only looking at me because that’s what you think you should do.
Shit I hear grandma in my head, ‘Now Terry, when someone is speaking and looking at you it’s good manners to look at them, to keep looking at them as a matter of respect for them’. And now that makes me feel that really I’m just trying to copy them, not find out how to be for myself, just be as they say. So they are always teaching me how to be, and really... and shit... how to be them! So Terry, don’t be you, you be me, you are to be how I am.
Yes, that’s right. And so you’ve learnt to obey them and be obedient to them. So be them. To mirror them.
Oh god, yes I can see what you’re saying. And I do. Fuck, so where is the real Terry? And I don’t know, I’m fucking Terry and I don’t even know where Terry is. So the Terry I am is only a made up fantasy creation that’s trying to be as they want me to be, or said I have to be - how they made me.
Yes.
Oh great, well that really makes me feel like it’s a joy to be alive. So all I do - everything is not for myself really even though I think and believe it is, as it’s all for them. So I exist for the other person and not for myself.
Yes.
Ah fuck, that’s shit, I don’t want to be like that. Fuck, fuck, fuck! I don’t Ann, I don’t want to do this... I don’t even know what or who I am.
I know, and I understand, and it’s the same for me in my ways, and neither do I. And so that’s why we’re doing our healing, all so we can see the truth of how we really are; and then once or as we see it, decide that we don’t want to be that way.
Yeah well fuck that, God or whomever you are, I DON’T WANT TO BE HOW I AM. SO CAN YOU PLEASE CHANGE ME! I want to be different Ann, I feel so stupid being how I am, and like everyone else can see that I’m untrue and that I’m copying them, and that really I’m just an idiot nothing person. Fuck, now I feel like I’m you, like what you’ve said. Fuck I’m everyone else other than myself. Shit, shit, shit, what a fucking fuck. Fuck I am swearing so much more lately-
Getting more in touch with how you’re really feeling about yourself and everything else.
Yes, and fuck, is that all the real me, just someone who can only say FUCK! But fuck it, I don’t want to be how I am, I hate being this way... ah, fuck, now I feel how much I hate myself. And I’ve never hated myself, I’ve always believed and told and even felt that I’ve loved myself, that I feel good about myself - about being me. But what have I been feeling good about - being the false me, the fucked me, the me they’ve created, so that’s great, that’s wonderful, now I feel I really love myself, like shit - I hate how I am, I hate myself.
Fuck Ann, I do, I hate myself, I hate how I am, I really do and I wish I could change myself, but fuck that too, I can’t, I can do a fucking thing about it.
No, only you can keep doing as you’re doing and expressing all you feel about it. All your self-hatred and anger. And this is more the real Terry, and as I’ve said before, I prefer you this way, and not the false you, not the untrue Terry that is putting on the show, nodding away and saying yes, being the good boy, doing what he’s been told to do. The Terry that’s on automatic and who is really off somewhere else in his mind not even wanting to be the false Terry and being with me, just wanting to reject and piss everyone off because he’s so fucked off about it all, so fucked off about how he’s been treated.
It’s true Ann, all you say as I can feel it all. So you may as well be me, and fuck it, I’ll be done with it. I’m leave the false Terry behind and fuck off permanently into my mind, once and for all - forever. And I’ll go where I please and have nothing to do with anyone, so I don’t have to keep pretending I’m like them... and fuck me, where would I go, and I don’t know, and fuck it all, here I am again feeling like my mind has been screwed around again, I feel so messed up, mad, just maddened by it all. Fuck, fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck! I hate it all, I hate how I am.
And there’s another thing-
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Terry, would stop nodding. Stop nodding!
Why, I want to nod.
Why do you?
Because, to show you that I’m listening, that I’m paying attention.
Yes but I can see you are. So why do you do it?
Because I want to - I feel to. And other than that, I don’t know, it’s what you do.
Yes okay, it’s okay to nod if that’s how you genuinely feel you want to nod, but that’s all so long as it’s for you - it’s what you want to do, and so you’re doing it for yourself. But you give me the feeling that you’re not doing it for yourself, but for me. And that’s what I’m objecting to.
Doing for you and not me?
Yes, it’s your programming, you being the good obedient boy, and the part that shows it’s really just a habit is when I’ve stopped talking and look at you, you nod, and nod a few times. So I know it’s for me that you’re nodding and you’re not just doing it for yourself. And you’re not really giving it to me because you love me and want me to know that you are loving everything I’m saying, paying so close attention to every word that leaves my mouth. You’re only nodding because if you don’t you believe you’ll get into trouble. So can you feel that within yourself?
No. But there is something within me, and I should be nodding, look - I’m nodding, that thinks what you are saying is plausible, so I can accept that, as I’m sure most of my behaviour, if not all of it, as we’ve been seeing more of lately and have been seeing these past years, is all habitual and programmed and a consequence of my bad parenting. So okay, I am an insincere nodder, so what can I do about that?
Nothing, like all of these things, it’s not that you’re now meant to stop nodding, even if you could make yourself, but you just have to keep trying to feel why you nod in that way, trying to get more in touch with those underlying feelings, which as we know, will give rise hopefully to your programming and why you were made to be that way. And then you will feel bad, because again it’s taken you away from your true self and it prevented you from freely forming and nodding because you felt you genuinely wanted to nod; and then you will hate your parents more, being more angry with them, which in turn will make you feel even worse, and so hate them even more. You know, that’s how it works.
Yeah, don’t remind me. Now I feel self-conscious, but shit I can feel that I want to nod all the time, even to every word you say - do I nod that much?
Yes, you’re almost a perpetual nodder. And if you’re not nodding you’re saying yes the same way or yeah, or you’re doing both at the same time. And when you’re doing that, then I can tell you’re not actually paying attention at all, you’re off in your mind somewhere else. So I can keep a gauge on how well you are paying attention to me because you give yourself away if you’re not.
So what you’re saying is that I’ve got to learn how to look at you, nod and say yes, all whilst I go off in my mind thinking about what I want, blocking you out.
Well yes, if that’s really how want to be with me. If you don’t want to have any relationship with me at all - if you want to reject me without my knowing and pretending that you’re still here with me; if you hate me that much that really you can’t bear listening to me but for some reason you still have stay with me and pretend that you do like me.
Fuck Ann, that in so many ways feels like how it was, how it still is at times, with mum and dad, particularly when they start telling me how I should be. I can see myself, even feel myself now, nodding away, saying yes, showing them I’m listening and paying attention, but it’s just a show, as really I’m off thinking about the cricket or you or anything else. And now I can also see and admit that really I can’t bear them going on at me like that, and yes, I do want to reject them, fuck them off and tell them to shut up and to stop it and to stop treating me so badly - so unlovingly, but I can’t. So I have to put on the show and they are none the wiser. All because they’ve trained me to be that way. So they’ve trained me to ignore them, reject them, even hate them, yet all the while pretending that I am listening and love listening to them. Fuck it’s all such a sham.
Yes. You were inducted well and truly into your part in the ‘family play’ and so that’s how you are, it’s how we all are, so far as I can see.
All right then I’ll try and feel what I feel when I nod, so you talk and I’ll nod.
No, I can’t just do that-
That’s enough, as one thing I can already feel is how hard it is for me not to nod. I feel like I’m going to blow up, I have to nod. But then if I nod more, on purpose, then I feel like my head is going to fall off. But I can see what you’re saying and I can feel how I do it, and yes it’s getting stronger how much I do it just to block them out, as a front really to pretend I’m there with them but really I’m not. So as you said Ann, that means that really I’m just there with them in my own family, like my body is, but my mind, and me Terry, the real me are not there.
Yes that’s right.
So fuck that, how do you have good and true and loving relationships like that?
You can’t.
So I’ve never had them.
No.
Shit, I can see it more clearly, and what a thought. I know I’ve seen that before, but as with all this growing in increasing awareness of yourself, you come at from a different angle and you see it even more clearly. So none of my relationships have been true - that much we know, but now I feel I really know it, or know it more.
Yes, that’s right, and how can they be if we’re all evil and in our negative states, if we’re all so busy doing all we can to reject each other and not relate truly, all putting on our false fronts and shows of pretence for each other.
I see what you mean. So then who really are we relating to?
I don’t know, possibly just fantasy people we make up for ourselves.
So the mum and dad I’m relating to are really in some way a fantasy mum and dad... hmmm... and so that then would apply to everyone.... even you?
That’s right. We’re not true and so we’re not truly relating to the true us in each other. And that’s what I was trying to point out by bringing your false nodding to your attention. That really you’re not truly connecting with me, we’re missing, and we’re connecting with false or fantasy images of each other. And possibly even further, we’re just trapped in ourselves relating to ourselves with none of it actually having to do truly with the other person at all. It’s all what we’re doing to ourselves.
So I’m completely wrapped up in myself?
Yes. Projecting your fantasy me and yourself onto me and yourself, as you’re not true in any of it. So you’re even totally wrapped up in your own fantasy you, not even in the real or true you.
Gee what a thought - eh? I should be reeling with bad feelings. It’s mind-boggling. But I can see what you mean - see, more nodding, nodding, nodding-
Good boy Terry.
Thank you, I’m a good nodder.
Yes, you have to keep making sure you praise yourself, because no one else is going to.
No! More shit to work through. Anyway, so me now sitting here talking to you, is really a fantasy or contrived me that my parents have created, and I guess with my own help to some degree; and I’m talking to another contrived person you and your parents have created, that being whom I call Ann, but really I’m off in fantasy-land and non of it is probably real at all.
That’s right, and how can it be when it’s negative, when it’s all denying our true state and all our true feelings.
And from that I can see, we can’t trust any of our feelings, can we, as really they are based on falseness and untruth and all the fantasy we’re creating too.
Yes, that’s right, it can’t be any other way.
So we’re all mad, it’s all mad and we’re all mad.
Yes, and that’s how I feel a lot of the time.
Yeah well trying to grasp it with my mind makes me feel like I’m going mad.
But you’re already mad Terry, so there is nowhere to go. Which is what this is all about, that we can’t go anywhere, that we’ve already gone off, right off, off into our own minds and their creations. And so we have to stop and just allow ourselves to be here, now, in our madness, in our fucked states of mind and feelings, all whilst we seek the truth of our madness; all whist we strive to uncover the truth of our self-rejection, and doing it through those feelings we have - mostly our bad feelings. Which of itself is an incredible thing, in that we can do that, we can use our bad feelings, feelings which might also be coming from our corrupt minds; but we can still use them to work our way back deeper into ourselves, if we choose to stop and not keep going on as we are.
Or maybe it’s that our bad feelings, the ones we are using to uncover the truth of ourselves, are still true and that’s why we are burying and refusing to allow ourselves to have them. So all the feelings we have, that we accept, are just part of the false mind-created ones.
Possibly. I don’t know.
And another thing you do Terry-
Oh god... all right-
Is that when I talk and if you are looking at me, you have to keep looking at me, but if I look away and then back at you, you’re no longer looking at me, giving me again the feeling that you’re only looking at me because that’s what you think you should do.
Shit I hear grandma in my head, ‘Now Terry, when someone is speaking and looking at you it’s good manners to look at them, to keep looking at them as a matter of respect for them’. And now that makes me feel that really I’m just trying to copy them, not find out how to be for myself, just be as they say. So they are always teaching me how to be, and really... and shit... how to be them! So Terry, don’t be you, you be me, you are to be how I am.
Yes, that’s right. And so you’ve learnt to obey them and be obedient to them. So be them. To mirror them.
Oh god, yes I can see what you’re saying. And I do. Fuck, so where is the real Terry? And I don’t know, I’m fucking Terry and I don’t even know where Terry is. So the Terry I am is only a made up fantasy creation that’s trying to be as they want me to be, or said I have to be - how they made me.
Yes.
Oh great, well that really makes me feel like it’s a joy to be alive. So all I do - everything is not for myself really even though I think and believe it is, as it’s all for them. So I exist for the other person and not for myself.
Yes.
Ah fuck, that’s shit, I don’t want to be like that. Fuck, fuck, fuck! I don’t Ann, I don’t want to do this... I don’t even know what or who I am.
I know, and I understand, and it’s the same for me in my ways, and neither do I. And so that’s why we’re doing our healing, all so we can see the truth of how we really are; and then once or as we see it, decide that we don’t want to be that way.
Yeah well fuck that, God or whomever you are, I DON’T WANT TO BE HOW I AM. SO CAN YOU PLEASE CHANGE ME! I want to be different Ann, I feel so stupid being how I am, and like everyone else can see that I’m untrue and that I’m copying them, and that really I’m just an idiot nothing person. Fuck, now I feel like I’m you, like what you’ve said. Fuck I’m everyone else other than myself. Shit, shit, shit, what a fucking fuck. Fuck I am swearing so much more lately-
Getting more in touch with how you’re really feeling about yourself and everything else.
Yes, and fuck, is that all the real me, just someone who can only say FUCK! But fuck it, I don’t want to be how I am, I hate being this way... ah, fuck, now I feel how much I hate myself. And I’ve never hated myself, I’ve always believed and told and even felt that I’ve loved myself, that I feel good about myself - about being me. But what have I been feeling good about - being the false me, the fucked me, the me they’ve created, so that’s great, that’s wonderful, now I feel I really love myself, like shit - I hate how I am, I hate myself.
Fuck Ann, I do, I hate myself, I hate how I am, I really do and I wish I could change myself, but fuck that too, I can’t, I can do a fucking thing about it.
No, only you can keep doing as you’re doing and expressing all you feel about it. All your self-hatred and anger. And this is more the real Terry, and as I’ve said before, I prefer you this way, and not the false you, not the untrue Terry that is putting on the show, nodding away and saying yes, being the good boy, doing what he’s been told to do. The Terry that’s on automatic and who is really off somewhere else in his mind not even wanting to be the false Terry and being with me, just wanting to reject and piss everyone off because he’s so fucked off about it all, so fucked off about how he’s been treated.
It’s true Ann, all you say as I can feel it all. So you may as well be me, and fuck it, I’ll be done with it. I’m leave the false Terry behind and fuck off permanently into my mind, once and for all - forever. And I’ll go where I please and have nothing to do with anyone, so I don’t have to keep pretending I’m like them... and fuck me, where would I go, and I don’t know, and fuck it all, here I am again feeling like my mind has been screwed around again, I feel so messed up, mad, just maddened by it all. Fuck, fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck! I hate it all, I hate how I am.
And there’s another thing-
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!