Thank you, Jordan, for answering my question so generously. I’m grateful I’m alive while you’re here. Long life to you, sir.

The guy who asked this question is so brave. I pray he prevails.

When I had to go to a domestic abuse shelter they thought I may have had a stroke because I had such difficulty talking. When you are so traumatized you can hardly speak and you no longer trust your percepetions it is a frightening place. Thank God for a wonderful counselor at the domestic abuse shelter in Shreveport la in 2014. She saved my life.

That dragon line is soo true. I had anxiety and depression problem last year and my psychologist gave me excercises at home. To bring up the things in my mind that made me sick (literally sick too my stomach) instead of avoiding them. And by doing that the anxiety and stress fades away. Avoiding the things you think will give you anxiety actually give you a lot more anxiety and stress.

Jordan is a man of great compassion. He really wants to help people. I can't understand any of the hate he gets.

Wow I felt it when he said “ almost everyone, who’s been traumatized, has been touched by their own malevolence or by someone else’s”

My Dad just passed away this week, I'm at my absolute lowest. He said he doesn't want me to be lonely and that he doesn't want me to waste my life. That's kind of a pressure, how to not waste your life? He said he just wants me to be happy. He's the best father I could have ever asked for and everything he did he done for us, his kids. I love you Dad! And I'm sorry, I thought we had more time.

The inner child can not come out and feel safe until the archetypal King shows up to protect it and show that it's a child of God

I just wanted to take a moment to express my admiration and appreciation for his work. The insights and teachings on personality and the human condition have been incredibly valuable to me, helping me gain a deeper understanding of myself and the world around me. His ability to convey complex ideas in a clear and relatable way is truly remarkable, and his lectures and books have been an inspiration to me. His dedication to helping others and being a shining example of what it means to be a great teacher. He is exactly the type of MAN the world needs today.

God bless this man does so much for us all 🙏🏻🙌🇮🇪💪🙌

Humanity is so damn lucky this man got himself healthy and stepped back into the spotlight to help all of us.

I have PTSD. The thing about knitting back together your idea of the world and yourself has been very helpful.

To anyone reading this, the advice Jordan is giving works, I promise you. Thank you, Jordan. God bless you.

Jordan is such a good psychologist and a such a empathetic person🙏🏼

Psychedelics are just an exceptional mental health breakthrough. It's quite fascinating how effective they are against depression and anxiety. Saved my life.

I've been in my own hell for years now and there seems to be no end to it. Men like Dr. Peterson have kept my head above water just enough to hold onto some hope I'll get there some day.

I read “ordinary men” in college and to this day I reference it as the book that changed my entire life. I could barely read the pages through all of my tears. It’s a must read, I can’t believe he referenced it here. I’ve never heard anyone else speak about this book. Thank you Jordan!

The man was unsure you would give him the time of day with his question but you nailed a perfect reply, very cool..

Whoever chose the color scheme for this speech was a genius. As an artist myself, I couldn’t take my eyes off it. The grayed whites of his suits makes his flesh look more alive by comparison, and the backlight illumination outlines him and sets him apart from the shaded red and blue in the background. It gives the impression of intelligence and clarity, all while illuminating him in white light that makes him seem all the more pure and trusting. Simply magnificent, I’m gonna have to draw or maybe even paint him.

Recently while logging my past traumas to find the root cause of my CPTSD I've found out my childhood was more traumatic than the entirety of my military service I conflict zones. That was a pill to swallow but it helped me to be clearer about where it all came from. I can accept those things that happened to me then, I was a boy, I didn't make these choices for these events as I had with military service. Writing down from childhood to now helped immensely on my road to mental health. Thank you. I have shared this with my entire VWF post and prior service buddies. Thank you Thank you 🙏

Dr. Peterson , I’m sure this won’t be seen. But you truly have given me something that was buried and hidden so deep… it’s sad to say but these videos sometimes keep me going. Thank you

Jordan looks like an angel sitting there .. dad for us all 😢😭 most of the times, am unable to stop tears when jordan talks with such empathy and in equally encouraging comforting manner.. a dad i never had..

Years in therapy, and the approach of all my therapists has been the opposite of what he said, and the opposite of what I asked them for in therapy. I got worse, thanks to therapy. I knew why. I knew what therapy did wrong, and how they wronged me and hurt me. In the end they judged me as hopeless case, too much damage, and telling the insurance that I was not willing to heal. Since I stopped therapy, I got much better.

Yep. If you’re struggling in life, it usually means there is something you’re supposed to be learning. When We get burned, we tend to focus our attention on possible external factors. Then immediately blame others, before we think to examine what our own actions might have been to create the burn.

I think the gut reflex of someone dealing with trauma is to avoid anything that reminds them of it, but that only contributes to a heightened fear response. This is why voluntary exposure therapy is so useful for people with anxiety. You're gradually confronting the thing that scares you and that (hopefully) creates a desensitization effect.

This couldn't have come at a better time. I really needed to hear this today. Can't begin to thank you enough🙏

I once saw someone describe Jordan Peterson as _"You're new stepdad, who actually loves you"_ As I went on to watch his videos I'd come to see why they said that. This video is a good example of that ✨

Engage with the Dragon that Burned You-wow Jordan that is a message I will mediate on today. Praying for your health and continued strength and courage. You have been called for such as time as this-and those of us who follow and respect you know it is not without personal consequence. I hope you can find comfort in knowing how much we appreciate your voice in this world today.

Voluntary confrontation Yes. I'm my current job i am required to operate a scissor lift to maintenance and install equipment in the ceiling. (Bay four is 30 feet high). It has taken four years, and I have very little problem now, working with heights. Before I was extremely intimidated nearly to the point of inability. I faced it by considering it the dragon I must slay. You CAN slay dragons.

hope the man recovers from his trauma

Sending best wishes to the vet who asked this question. Hope it’s helped and he’s doing better. He seemed like a genuine, nice person.

I was there that night sitting in the audience when this question was asked. Being a survivor of childhood trauma and having PTSD myself this really resonated with me and in my times of darkness these videos give me hope. F.J

Wow. This is the first time I've ever even heard of someone else who sees the lines. The ones I see are vertical and they run up and down, looks like energy currents.. I've also been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and PTSD from years of abuse leading up to an assault where I was taken to ICU at a trauma center and narrowly survived. Dr. Peterson is so valuable. And he's right, also, writing has been one of the best forms of therapy for me. It's hurts and it's hard sometimes, but I think leaving the bitter roots buried deep in my core would rot me from the inside out. Facing the dragon is definitely necessary. And I feel validated hearing that maybe seeing the "lines" didn't mean I was crazy. Maybe I was just traumatized!! God bless you Jordan.🙏

Thank you Jordan for helping so many broken men. The world certainly needs more love, understanding and compassion. Men and women need to love and respect each other. Love and respect go hand in hand. ✝️❤️🙏🏻🕊

The end part about PTSD and malevolence is spot on.

I know that the man had studied and read a lot but the way he expresses thoughts, feelings and knowledge, the way that reaches any human brain understanding so that people can feel seen and understood is something to fall in love with. Fall in love with a human brain is beyond everything.

Beautiful how Jordan takes the extra time to help this man. I hope he gets the full healing that he needs

I’m so glad he was able to heal! What a horrible thing! I had ptsd, but managed to overcome it. For most purposes.

Finally someone with real understanding! Every medical person treating PTSD should listen to this! I had severe, treatment resistant, complex PTSD from a lot of stuff overseas including 2 assassination attempts. Multiple independent psychiatric assessments and full medical board said I had no hope of any meaningful recovery and I was classified as Total and Permanently Disabled. My life now is very different but it is genuinely awesome. If you’re currently wrecked by PTSD - you have a future and it CAN be awesome too. Dr Peterson highlighted 2 of the things that helped me. Deliberately facing things that triggered me every day - wisely! Small, gradual, deliberate, exposure to things and then reflecting a little bit on that. Being in a supermarket aisle eventually didn’t tell my brain I was back being hunted and trapped. We’re constantly told discomfort is bad. That is the most destructive thing you can believe. Discomfort is our friend. Without discomfort we can’t grow, adapt, re-program in any way mentally or physically. Coming to understand general malevolence / evil and de-personalising it was also huge for me. One critical thing I would add, which Dr Peterson didn’t mention, is coming to understand my true identity and where my self worth truly comes from. Only the creator can attribute actual worth to a creation, so understanding that fundamental truth transformed me. The infinite Gd who created everything that exists out of nothing wants personal relationship with me, and you. He took on human flesh and died horrendously in my place, and yours, to allow that eternal relationship. That is what truly defines our worth. The fact that we have the free will to choose to ignore or accept that is a mind-boggling revelation about who God is. I’ve done some self authoring in the past which was helpful but am going to buy the self authoring course he mentioned so I can work more on that aspect.

The girl in the story is similar to mine. I was an adult who lost a child to the bully. It fragmented my perceptions a long time, pointless trying to express this to a person who has narcissistic personality disorder, he had me thrown in jail repeatedly for 8 hours the maximum holding time for when pathological liars convince police you are guilty of their crimes to cover their tracks. I felt infantile and defenceless against all these authorities meant to protect victimised women and kids, social work failed to look beyond the theatre or the fact my psychologically alienated son was saying what he was terrorised to say, despite saying the opposite four times to police when interviewed with me at his original home. I fear the magnitude of soul crime will never be acknowledged. I suffer cptsd and i have drug dependency on the horror of benzodiazepines, im going through that hell while at the same time totally impossible to express any of my feelings without being shamed and blamed for"ruining the family meeting with my son and narcy in a lot of ways or should I say just completely lacking empathy other supposed family. I really don't have a family in the traditional sense, narcissists make short work of destroying every connection to the scape goat. Despite the cheating etc he was this great family guy who seems untouchable despite the obvious destruction. A dragon so fierce and malevolent it will destroy the strongest consciousness, I was hearing my name called, I had delusional and invasive thoughts, none of which I'd ever had before the cptsd or the drug dependency on benzos. I was beside myself as any mother would be being told it was 18 months before a case hearing and no access to a kidnapped child being cavorted in front of me by my supposed replacement mother, no regard for my sons feelings or mine. I lost everything. A perfect question and answer for my situation, stuck in freeze response to ambient abuse that never ends. Bullied doesn't cover it, soul murder might.

This is the kind of content that hooked me to Peterson, and hope we can have a lot more like it. I will sit and listen to politics or religion to kill time, but what I, and I think others too are really looking for deep down is therapy in some form or another. We're all broken and we all feel we are less than we could be, and this is speaking directly to that extremely deep desire for purpose or towards a better life.

This clip brought tears to my eyes. The persecution JP faces today reminds me of someone else's who many of us have read about. Stay strong!

This man is phenomenal

This man is helping so many people Amen🙏

What a gem of a mind JP has, just wondering what a trip it must be for any ordinary Joe to live 1hr in JPs mind, so extraordinaly well arranged in a depth and breadth of knowledge and insights with such a fast brain. Im in awe everytime i listen and so thankful to be able to listen to this man.

Happy Friday Mr Peterson. Wishing you and the family well

This brought tears to my eyes just by seeing the pain in the gentleman’s eyes. I love Dr Peterson on so many levels. His compassion, integrity, intelligence and his gift of sharing to others in order to help others~brings me to my knees. I’m entirely grateful for the good in him, it brings peace to my spirit in troubled waters. Thank you Dr. Peterson.❤️❤️❤️

Indeed. I suffered a fraud by a “friend” in a business that caused me to lose everything and then to fall in depression and PTSD, distrusting people in general. It wasn’t until I randomly saw the story of slavery on TV that I understood how evil was universal, as Jordan says. This had a curative effect: I wasn’t special, I was actually being entitled by feeling that bad, compared to those people. The progress started since there and now I am now fully recovered.

I had an 'ah ha' moment of insight as I listened to this, realising that I very regularly have dreams that involve many people from highschool. Perhaps some of my struggles are because there is a part of me who is still stuck in that age, that part of my self concept has not yet grown to where I am now Perhaps willingly and actively looking at that part of me before bed could be a way to move through what has been stuck, rather than just experiencing the intrusive feelings, thoughts and memories of shame that plague me throughout the day I'm going to try it! Thank you Jordan :)

I have cptsd and at some point struggled severely.. especially to read and form verbal words. I would sometimes sit with what happened and make sure I feel what it is I needed to feel until one day it had no effect on me anymore. This is when I realised that other trivial things that used to bother or trigger me, doesn't have any effect on me either. Thank you 🙏🌻

Jordan Peterson books need to be in all psychiatric hospitals. Please. Greetings from England

I remember being in middle school and a male math teacher would pink on this younger boy, calling him to the front of the class and without mercy belittling him. All us kids would laugh, me too, but secretly I would flinch and feel bad for the boy, but was too afraid to stick up for him,out of fear the teacher would do to me what he did to the boy. To this day I wished I had done something!!

I love when you show a way of dealing with psychological problems that you used in your clinical practice, its so enlightening. Thank you, Jordan!

I so appreciate your generosity, sir!

Dream interpretation is an excellent way of discovering the ghosts within.

Jordan is a gift to humanity. I hope that those who hate him so fiercely eventually come to that same realization instead of devoting their time and energy in trying to destroy this man.

Nothing is possible without God. The human will is insufficient.

The best description of trauma and how to address it that I have ever heard.

I have CPTSD since age 17, when I had surgery the general anaesthetic didn’t work, my body paralysed by it, so I couldn’t move or speak, I could feel everything. But I was brought to instant tears when Jordan said most with PTSD have been subject to malevolence… the trauma maybe beginning when abducted by a couple with a friend when we were 11… Something shifted in my awareness tonight of my experience listening to this video… and how I can navigate forward 🙏

Jordan= You have no idea, how many times you've helped me find A WAY- to carry on. You are a voice of sanity- in a very dark world. Thank you sir.

So much love for you JP...

I needed that. Thank you

As a fellow Vet I am happy you asked. You did a lot of as a great service with your courage. You spoke for a lot of us who would not have gotten the chance to…..

I love how he ends this with putting good and evil in context. Thank you Dr. Peterson for bringing awareness and conversation around the Word of God.

The things you touched on are things I have told my counselor. The mirror, evil, chaotic thinking, fear of people. I have come a long way in many areas and even recently finding out I have trigger words. My recovery process is at maslow's 3rd tier. I havent found belonging. I have accepted I am a nomad. In my 2 churches that has put me in a strange place because I wont join either as a member. God has shown me that I am like Paul, I dont belong to anyone. I will be baptized and serve both. I have bonding issues and can not get over what I see in people . I see them, not just their physical presence. Maybe self authoring would help, I do own the book ordinary men, I haven't read it yet. Thanks for this help

Thank you Dr Peterson for this wonderful explanation of evil. I was naive for a long time and was done in when confronted by malevolence. By realizing that we all have evil in us, I'm not as shocked when I see people act in what I perceive to be hateful ways.

The man who asked this question has a really really unique spirit and I’m very impressed with his ability to understand and work through his ptsd. I also have ptsd and it’s a war you absolutely can win. Stay strong 💪

Thank you 🙏 struggling to see hope or light . CPTSD is incredibly hard and personally I’m constantly getting into situations where i retraumatise myself through others especially with men . Last relationship just ended it was unsafe but I was so desperate to be saved I stayed longer then I should . He was everything at the start I felt seen safe and loved only to find out it was all just a plan a deception and a counterfeit

Goood Work Thank you!

I was there that night in the crowd when this was asked. Thank you Jordan, you are the person who inspired me to pursue my goal of becoming a psychologist I'll be 38 when I am fully qualified and it will be my first ever job.

Absolutely brilliant response

Very helpful!

It's so beautifully uncanny, how JP can articulate experiences of people who've gone through bad stuff with such empathy! 🙌

I suffered a LOT in my live and still do, my final conclusion to all this is life is beautiful, short, worth of living, I'm strong, I forgave everyone, I don't take it personal anymore, I move on...and I DONT CARE.. DRAGON IS THERE, LET IT BE, IT GETS TIRED and bored of teasing you...I'll die as an OLD being... happy with my sword down

Thanks for sharing this with everyone.. A great message

Thank you. Such a bless watching.

Prayers with u & your family I am hear a lot is going on in your life. Thank you for your work over the years. You are an amazing person Jordan.

Thank you so much.

always a great speaker

Imagine being rejected and breaking a young girl like that. It's literally making me cry to think about that poor child. I was bullied, but I believe what was done to me was almost sweet compared to what she must have endured.

Thank you for these insights 🍀🙏🏻🌺

Excellent! Thank you!

Thank you.

I've been struggling a few years now. I was at a place of no hope care or answers for existence. Getting some help from my Dr and a lot of your videos and others have brought me to a place of hope and purpose. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I truly needed to hear things that may seem common sense to you. The world needs more people like u. I may have continued that path and it would have led to death. I was brushing past it's door. Forever great ful.

I just love doctor Peterson he's so dang good with everybody so down-to-earth with his amazing abilities I'm sure he'll go down in history is one of the all-time greats

Thank you for your thoughtful and wise responses to the question.

This is gold. Thank you Jordan.

Blessed be the followers of Peterson!

Thank you mate, I also suffer from PTSD and didnt get to make it to his Brisbane show, I wanted to ask him something similar, so thank you for the question.

Amazing Insight!

Thank you ❤

hello! I'm a young woman with plenty of diagnosed mental disorders. borderline personality disorder is the most noticeable one to me, and then depression, anxiety, OCD, bipolar, ADHD, PTSD, and a quite weird eating disorder. what Jordan speaks of here, I relate to it in some way... not exactly with my past traumas, but it could still help there. what I wanted to touch on was how true it was because "engaging the dragon that burned you" really does help. as a teenager, I had developed hypochondria, or irrational health anxiety, and my therapist suspected it was from the paranoia part of my borderline personality disorder. Either way, my health anxiety dictated my entire life for the better part of 2 or 3 years. I was trapped. It had started off as a headache from what was most likely allergies in the springtime. Yet something about my brain had changed it felt like. It wasn't like when I was a child -- feeling pain or sick sucked, but it didn't freak me out like this. And then began the cycle. The headache appeared, I worried about my head, somehow unable to consider anything but the worst possible scenario, and my constant panic made my headache worse obviously. And of course other physical symptoms had risen. I felt dizzy constantly, my stomach was twisted into knots, I was throwing up every day, and I was too terrified to leave my house, or even leave my bed. My delusions became so bad to the point where I messaged my online friends explaining that if I stopped messaging, it was because I died of some illness that was making me feel this way. I had gone to the ER many times, urgent care, doctors, etc. The only thing I could figure to do was distract myself in bed, but I was still irrationally anxious, panicking, and beyond irritated. Confronting the dragon was legitimately the only solution. I don't really find myself in that situation anymore when I feel bad physical symptoms. Of course I still deal with anxiety and I have a very, very, very long way to go when it comes to any of my other mental issues. But I am thankful that I have one less thing to worry about. Speaking of mental issues, Jordan Peterson helps me understand mine like no one else, and it feels like he gives me the tools to aid in my recovery. Thanks to anyone that read this, I hope you have a wonderful day ♡

We are so fortunate to have Jordan! Just listen and you can be guided in a better direction, his observations and tools to move forward with are priceless☆☆☆☆☆

Thank you🔥

Thanks!

So much respect for what Dr Peterson is doing. This is one of my favourite clips.

Such a thoughtful and compassionate response- real tools for real suffering.... as well as long term ways to engage with coming to grips with realities of evil in the world and in self

Thank you 💯...

Thank you. 💜

Thank you for being so open with suggestions. I truly appreciate you. You are a gift to many people. They don't want any of us to better ourselves. They want us to stay asleep. You are waking people up. You are a blessing.