My first reaction is surprise.

I used these cards with him months ago and he seemed curious, but puzzled.

So I never showed them to him again.

Today he found them himself and says he wants to use them to show me how he feels. I have to show him every card and he will select.

Because am curious I translate every German emotion card to Slovak and not to English.

When I want to be as sure as possible my son gets what am saying I switch from English to Slovak. I try to limit this to a few times a week, because I want him to speak English to me (though without explicitly telling him he has to speak English to me…)

My second reaction is a mix of relief, joy, and some satisfaction of having been able to predict the first card he’d select: strong.

The other two I didn’t see coming. especially not his determination to find the card for happiness.

As someone who has a very low probability of being happy in the environment I am in (Slovakia), have a brutally dark, but also incredibly beautiful family history, I fear greatly to pass on my struggles with being happy.

Oddly I often experience genuine joy (which I believe most people I run into do not), but almost never happiness. I go from short, very real, intense joyful states, to the deepest existential despair where currently my only antidotes are: lifting the burdens off of others and endless curiosity (why do you think I have been posting 0,0001 percent of what AI tells me?)

So hours later, when he is asleep, I suddenly become afraid that he thinks he has to be happy because I am not…

My modus operandi in this world is strongly shaped by my attempts to save my father from fading away. A mission no child should attempt and which mostly failed of course.

So naturally I get worried that Bruno is already doing the same, though I have otherwise seen almost no signs of this and the ones I did see are so small only the most paranoid person would see them as proof the family pattern that begun with me is repeating.

The next level in my reaction is that I know full well that you, me and everyone we know live inside a self-sustained, organically organizing field of values (I call it the predator system) which has an internal logic that makes it keep human beings suffering badly enough to perform, but not so badly that they stop consuming. So I know this system is set up to – among many other things – NEVER make me think am doing fine as a parent, unless I’d fallen victim to narcissism (which I have sufficient proof of that I am not, though like everyone I have narcissistic moments, it’s not pathological narcissism). The system allows you to think you are great at parenting only when you are NOT good at parenting at all. I have labeled it the predator system for a reason. It stimulates what is toxic and tries to nip anything that is truly alive and vibrant and independent of the system in the bud.

I opt to believe him.

He’s set to be a Hollywood actor if he is indeed faking happiness to save me.

But am watchful.

I reject the predator system, but I escape it only by about 40 percent more than other people.

Meaning that our culture is so dehumanizing, so averse to you becoming fully ignited, that even if you have had it spelled it out to you repeatedly you can’t just break away from its influence.

But aren’t you a therapist?

Shouldn’t you have everything figured out?

I get that reaction a lot every time I express any kind of self-doubt in conversations.

Therapist means: battle companion. I don’t know if it’s literally true. There is conflicting info on the origin of the term, but I embrace it like that.

I can stand by the side of my clients and fight their battles with them, because every day I jump into my own battles.

Some may call it a form of masochism.

I myself see it as a ruthless quest for clarity, paid for in sometimes crushing pain and a lot of isolation, because in the end people prefer comfort over clarity and only need me in their breaking points, when comfort is no longer enough and they need someone to sit with them in the their storms of clarity, to gently point out why the storm is stripping them of ballast and illusions.