Psychopathy
After getting a PET Scan, Melissa meets with a neuroscientist who believes brain patterns can identify psychopaths. Dr. James Fallon also happens to be a psychopath. He shares his incredible personal story before revealing her results.
Melissa G. Moore: IG @melissag.moore; Tik Tok @melissa.g.moore
Lauren Bright Pacheco: www.LaurenBrightPacheco.com
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Speaker 13 Previously on Happy Face.
Speaker 14 Meeting Melissa's mom in person, I was really taken aback aback by the fact that they don't look alike. She absolutely looks like her father.
Speaker 16 Keith fell in high school. I believe it was 25 feet.
Speaker 16 When they interview killers, they have found that a large percentage of them damaged their frontal lobe before they were 22 changes their whole personality.
Speaker 13 I went back to my truck and rehearsed the lies I planned to tell when I was arrested. What made me cross the line into murder?
Speaker 13 Maybe it was my nature.
Speaker 17 there was just this thing that people said in the family they would say oh that's just keith that's just how keith is and it seemed to be acceptable
Speaker 20 did you feel you're in control did you just lose it with his son i just lost it i didn't i didn't i don't think it had anything to do with control i just had paybacks a bitch you know
Speaker 20 and i just grabbed him and just started wailing him of course i didn't know him to stop i was gonna beat him to death i'm scared i look like him i know i came from him.
Speaker 18 That's okay.
Speaker 15 My heart is so turned off, I'm afraid I'm built like him.
Speaker 18 In the vines,
Speaker 18 in the vines,
Speaker 18 where the sun don't ever shine,
Speaker 18 I would shiver
Speaker 18 the whole night through.
Speaker 17 Worst case case scenario about tomorrow when I meet with Dr. Fallon is that I'm going to find out that biologically my brain is wired exactly the same as my dad.
Speaker 14 Melissa's deepest fear is that somewhere in the threads of her DNA are the same miswired strands that eventually led her father to kill.
Speaker 14 I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco,
Speaker 14 and this is Happy Face.
Speaker 17 I'm prepared for both ways that it will
Speaker 17 like I know I'm a flawed human being. I know that I sometimes can get narcissistic like everybody else.
Speaker 17 I know sometimes I can be selfish like everybody else. I know that sometimes I forget to say the right thing to someone or to offer the hug when they needed it.
Speaker 17 I know that sometimes I laugh at inappropriate things at the inappropriate time. I know sometimes
Speaker 17
I can be insensitive. I know that, but that's not all the time.
And I know I'm not a bad person and I can see that other people are flawed too and make mistakes too.
Speaker 17 And that's what makes me give some comfort that maybe I'm not a psychopath is that all of these things that I've been looking for are just common traits amongst us all.
Speaker 17 Maybe I'm just as flawed as everybody.
Speaker 14 Even if you are,
Speaker 14
you're going to realize that it doesn't change any of those things. You're a good person.
You would never do what your father's done, and you could never be what he is.
Speaker 14 Last week, Melissa had a PET scan to determine if her brain had the neurological markers associated with psychopathy.
Speaker 17 Today is a really big day for me. It's a moment that
Speaker 17 I am coming face to face with something I've been running away from, from learning about. I had a hard time sleeping last night because
Speaker 17 today I find out if my worst fears and insecurities are true.
Speaker 17 My dad and I had a very close relationship, almost a psychic connection, and it makes me wonder if my connection with my dad was because our brains are similar or our makeup is similar, if I'm capable of being like my dad.
Speaker 17 But I don't know, and maybe Dr. Fellon can explain to me the difference between the brain of a serial killer and the brain of a psychopath.
Speaker 17 Maybe they're different, but in my mind right now, they're one and the same and I'm nervous about that.
Speaker 14 Are you ready to face it today?
Speaker 17
I think that in the past I wasn't in a space where I could accept the results. I feel so much more secure with who I am.
I feel like with
Speaker 17 Dawn's acceptance of who I am and knowing that my heart is different.
Speaker 17 than if my brain does prove to be similar to my father, that at least my heart is different. I'm actually, you know,
Speaker 17 when I think of the word psychopath, I think of someone who is a killer, someone who's cold-hearted, someone who is
Speaker 17 evil. And maybe that term is the problem.
Speaker 14 Melissa's definition of a psychopath is a description of her father.
Speaker 14 Keith's definition, however, differs.
Speaker 21 I want to know what happens in a person's mind from point to point in their life.
Speaker 21
I don't think a person is a psychopath all their life. Yeah.
No, I don't either. No, I think it's
Speaker 21 something they grow into.
Speaker 20 Yeah.
Speaker 21 And it's a behavior pattern they grow into. And it's not a
Speaker 21
live normal lives up to a point and we make that conscious decision to go a certain way. And then it's like watching Planet of the Apes.
Everything goes different directions.
Speaker 21 You don't turn right or turn left. Possibilities are endless.
Speaker 17 What's going through your head right now?
Speaker 14 Do you know what to expect?
Speaker 17 The doctor has my brain scans and maybe I find out that I am a psychopath or maybe I find out I have a brain tumor or maybe I might have a perfectly healthy brain. I don't know.
Speaker 17 Like I could be walking into anything actually today.
Speaker 17 But I think knowing is better than not knowing.
Speaker 14 Why does it matter?
Speaker 17 Like what do you hope you're going to gain from today?
Speaker 17 For me, why it matters is for a lot of people, I feel like I've been under a microscope and I really haven't had any tools to combat what they say.
Speaker 17
But at this point, I'm almost, I really don't even care what other people think. This is for my self-awareness.
This is for me to be able to
Speaker 17 know
Speaker 17 how I relate to the world.
Speaker 14 Dr. James Fallon is a neuroscientist and professor of psychiatry and human behavior at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine.
Speaker 14 I'd first read about him years ago in a fascinating article in The Atlantic titled Life as a Non-Violent Psychopath.
Speaker 14 In it, he shares his own incredible experience of accidentally discovering he possessed the brain imaging pattern and genetic makeup of a full-blown psychopath while conducting unrelated research, and how that knowledge impacted his life and relationships.
Speaker 14 When Melissa shared her fears with me about her own potential psychopathy, I immediately reached out to Fallon. I felt if anyone could walk Melissa through her PET scan and her results, Dr.
Speaker 14 Fallon would be the perfect person for the job.
Speaker 19 Dr. Fallon? Hi, how are you doing? Get you?
Speaker 17 Nice to meet you.
Speaker 19 Okay, great, thank you.
Speaker 19 So, this is our house.
Speaker 14
Dr. Fallon's house was bright and cheerful.
The exterior was surrounded by colorful, well-tended plants and flowers. And the inside was filled with family photos.
Speaker 14 And art, he explained, was mostly created by various family members. It felt like a welcoming, creative place.
Speaker 19
This is my lab. This is your lab.
Yeah, because I do analysis. We plan experiments here.
So anyway, this is where we live. And I was just looking at some of the slides.
Just got your slides. Right.
Speaker 19 You know, your PET scan.
Speaker 17 As you can imagine, I'm kind of nervous. What?
Speaker 17 Well, I don't know what you know about my background.
Speaker 19 I know who your dad is, certainly, but I don't know much about you, and I didn't want to know too much about you.
Speaker 19 Because
Speaker 19
I didn't want to look at the scan with some idea of who you were. Okay.
That's the idea. Yeah.
The less I know going in, the better. Okay.
Speaker 5 Okay.
Speaker 14 Again, because Dr.
Speaker 14 Fallon's own brain exhibits indicators of psychopathy, we felt he had the ideal insight and expertise to help Melissa navigate and process her PET scan results, regardless of what they revealed.
Speaker 19
The behaviors are not in themselves evil. It's the context that we consider making them evil.
And that context is defined differently in different societies.
Speaker 19
All societies are not the same. So there's no absolute behaviors of good and bad for these things.
So it's not just the genes you have. Because I mean, I inherited all these psychopath-related genes.
Speaker 19
I don't have much anxiety. If I'm caught by somebody doing something, I can look them in in the face and they go, he's completely innocent.
So you can inherit them, but if you've been treated okay,
Speaker 19
and especially with love, it kind of negates that effect. All you do is become assertive, low anxiety, kind of up all the time.
You can be glib and all this stuff like that.
Speaker 19 You can sound like a salesman, but it comes across as an earnest in a nervous way.
Speaker 17 So are you a psychopath?
Speaker 19 I'm not a categorical psychopath. I mean, I've been analyzed, I've been psychiatrically analyzed.
Speaker 19 And one of the interesting reads, I was looking at one of the diagnoses, and it was basically the summary is that here's someone who has all the thoughts and urges and dreams and everything that a full-blown psychopath has, but he never acts them out.
Speaker 19
Now, I wouldn't have known that. I thought everybody was having these thoughts.
And really crazy, intense scared the hell out of people with them.
Speaker 19 I always assumed, because it was in my head, everybody was thinking this way, and they're not. The difference is that I never act them out.
Speaker 19
I mean, I got an absolutely clean record, and I got a family. I'm still dating the girl I dated at 12 years old.
We were both 12.
Speaker 19 And we've been married forever and I've had a really great job forever and I have kids and grandkids and I have a normal family life.
Speaker 19 But somehow, and two of the psychiatrists couldn't figure out why I was not like a really bad guy because I have all these other, the genetics, the brain pattern, and some of the traits, but I just don't act.
Speaker 19 the bad stuff out. I think I'm a wonderful guy.
Speaker 17 I feel like I'm relating to you right now because I feel like I'm a great girl. I feel like I'm a great person.
Speaker 19
Oh yeah. I think I'm terrific.
And it's not that I don't have faults, but overall, I said, who wouldn't like to be around me? You know, I was like, you know, I said, great. I was like,
Speaker 19 and so I asked, started with my wife, and I asked her, I said, you got to tell me now, really, what do you think of me? I mean, tell me. I'm not going to get mad or anything.
Speaker 19 And I did that with my mother, my brothers, my sister, my kids.
Speaker 17 It takes a lot of bravery to hear what people really think.
Speaker 19
No, because I didn't really care. I mean, you know, for me, it was part of the way it is.
I just was interested. And being a scientist, you're able to say, I'm just a scientist.
Speaker 19 And they all told me the same thing. They said, you do really psychopathic things, you don't even realize it.
Speaker 17 Did they give you examples?
Speaker 19 Oh, yeah, yeah, in great detail. I put people at risk for the fun of it.
Speaker 19 And it's not like strangers need to worry about me, but if you become close to me, you got to worry because I'll get you to do something.
Speaker 19
I'm the person that runs with the bulls and tries to get you to run with me. That's not psychopathic, but I do it all the time.
And I put my people close to me and friends at risk.
Speaker 19 I lived in East Africa and I went trout fishing and brought my son and I brought him into a place I knew there were lions.
Speaker 19
And I said, there's only a 5% chance we're going to get attacked, but isn't it going to be fun? So I was telling them, I'm trying to kill him. Right.
But it was for the thrill.
Speaker 19 So having the genes per se is not the death sentence. What happens early to regulate those genes, which is fixed, is the problem.
Speaker 19 People always want to know what percent of our behavior is determined by genes,
Speaker 19 nature, and how much is by environment, nurture.
Speaker 19 And it's almost the wrong way to ask the question, as it turns out.
Speaker 19 And so the idea is if you have the genes, if the gun is loaded with those alleles that tend to give you those traits, and you're abused, it fixes those, and in that case, the environment means everything.
Speaker 17 So in my dad's case, he had the genes and he had the environment.
Speaker 19 Yeah, I mean, this is almost every dictator, you know, really aggressive dictator and every serial killer I've looked that I've, you know, could find as much information, 100%
Speaker 19
were abused early and they had in their family these traits. The only one who claims he was never abused was Pol Pot.
He was the only one, and I don't believe him.
Speaker 19 I think, you know, a lot of, sometimes they lie.
Speaker 17 I'm learning about that with my dad, that through this journey, what has been unique about my dad is that he says one thing and what he does is another thing, but he's so believable in what he says that people don't look at what he does.
Speaker 17
That's it. That's it.
And being raised with that, like I only saw what he did and believed him too.
Speaker 17 And so as I've been going on this journey, I've been figuring out that it's not what he says, it's what he does.
Speaker 17 But exactly what you just said is how he said it was just so matter of fact and straight faced that you just don't even guess it.
Speaker 19 Well, this is the charm of it. This is real psychopaths or people, even narcissistic personality disorder can do it with such earnestness and glibness and no anxiety, you absolutely believe them.
Speaker 19 You believe them before you believe anybody. And that's what makes it so pernicious and insidious.
Speaker 19 In fact,
Speaker 19 a real psychopath doesn't really believe what they're doing is bad. It's kind of just.
Speaker 19 Whereas a sociopath knows what they're doing is wrong.
Speaker 17 Oh, there's a difference.
Speaker 19
Yeah, yeah. Well, everybody's got a different definition, but then usually people end up, oh, they're kind of the same.
They're not.
Speaker 19 A real psychopath we call a primary psychopath. And these are the ones that are clinically psychopaths that have no moral reasoning,
Speaker 19 have no guilt, they have no remorse. So what makes the personality disorders so different than other psychiatric disorders is that people don't know what they're doing is wrong or different.
Speaker 19
And I'll give you an example. We all know somebody who is obsessive and compulsive.
In fact, there's a bunch of people who have OCD, obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Speaker 19 But there are people with OCD-PD, the personality disorder variant of this. So they have obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.
Speaker 19 The people with OCD doing the crazy things every time they walk by three times and they skip over it, they know what they're doing is crazy, but they can't stop it.
Speaker 19 The people with OCD PD, the percentage disorder, thinks what they're doing is perfectly okay and good and works. Big difference, right? Right.
Speaker 19 So superficially, the behaviors are the same, but what happens inside and how they're generated, what they mean, are completely different.
Speaker 19
Now somebody with sociopathy, like we were talking about, which is called a secondary psychopath, they know what they're doing is wrong. They do have remorse.
They do have guilt. They do have anxiety.
Speaker 19 But they're still driven to do those behaviors. So both a psychopath and a sociopath can do the exact same thing, murder, rape, and everything, different reasons.
Speaker 19
And a lot of times a psychopath does it for fun. It's a game.
It's just manipulation. They're playing a game with things.
Whereas a sociopath, a lot of time, could be the loser who's getting even.
Speaker 19 with all the women of the world or all the athletes of the world or all the blondes in the world.
Speaker 19 it goes on and on and on.
Speaker 19 But those people can be maybe not wired genetically for psychopathy, but they were like bullied when they're eight, nine, ten years old. A lot of times these are bullied people.
Speaker 19 But if you are wired for it and you're bullied, I mean, it's just terrible.
Speaker 20 See, when my father beat me, I wondered what he was feeling when he beat me. Like, what was there so gratifying to him
Speaker 20 to beat the shit out of me and then send me to bed like nothing happened
Speaker 20 and then go back in and do what he wanted to do with mom or whatever or just go on with life and then the next day like nothing happens he's okay.
Speaker 20 Now when I'm killing my victim I'm sitting there going like now is this what my father felt when he beat the shit out of me is this the feeling he got did you get an answer to that I really didn't
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Speaker 14 The question remains, does trauma trigger violent psychopathy or is it a domino effect?
Speaker 19
The thing is, there's so many of these, what I call cluster B, personality disorders. These are the ones that are dangerous to other people.
Like histrionic.
Speaker 19 These are people that are always using sex to manipulate people and they're really nasty to be around.
Speaker 19 And also narcissistic personality disorder and psychopathy. And so for those, what you're doing is basically looking at all these traits, 10, 15, 20 traits.
Speaker 19 And the standard thing is you take them, you score each one of those traits from 0 to 2.
Speaker 19 0, let's say, 0 narcissism. One is kind of pretty narcissistic, and 2, always narcissistic, like really bad.
Speaker 19 And you take all these numbers, you add them up, and if it's above a threshold, like for psychopathy, that's above 28 or 30, anything from 28 or 30 to 40, it's a full-blown psychopath.
Speaker 19 If you have a psychopath that's 40, you're talking about such a dangerous person.
Speaker 19 I've been tested, and I'm not really a psychopath, because I'm not a full-blown psychopath, but I'm like right on the edge. You know, I score in the 20s every time.
Speaker 19 What I lack is the criminality and the really antisocial stuff. I really have no interest in hurting people.
Speaker 17 When I think of psychopath, it seems to have a negative label. Sure.
Speaker 17 But is it actually a good thing to have for,
Speaker 17 is it possible it could be good?
Speaker 19 Well, you know, full-blown psychopaths, you know, the 30 and above on a hair scale or on a number of scales, it's kind of never a good thing because a lot of times they never make it past their teens or 20s and they're in prison and they...
Speaker 19 they can have a lot of disorganized behavior.
Speaker 19 But people who are borderline or pro-socials that are not quite clinically there, a lot of those traits are very, very useful for navigating and becoming successful.
Speaker 19 But there are the traits, one of the two main groups of traits, factors, is called fearless dominance.
Speaker 19
And fearless dominance is a bunch of traits, but it's basically the person walks into the room and they got that light around them. People interpret it as charisma.
They walk fearlessly.
Speaker 19 They'll take chances, but they win. They know how to take like statistical, scientific chances and win, but they'll take risks and they do quite well and people sense it.
Speaker 19
People sense it immediately, so they're very attracted to it. And so that's a major psychopathic trait.
And if you look at the study I've done of U.S.
Speaker 19 presidents from George Washington on, those that scored the highest from their biographers who knew all about them, the ones that scored highest in fearless dominance, the top ones are like Teddy Roosevelt,
Speaker 19
JFK, FDR, Bill Clinton. They're thought to have charisma and great abilities as leaders, but they have the highest psychopathy ratings.
So people are attracted to it.
Speaker 19
I mean, this is one of the reasons why psychopathy is always with us, because people are attracted to it. These are people who would take chances.
You want that person on your side.
Speaker 19
So I don't care if he's a badass. I want him to be my badass.
Right. I want him to be my crook, my thief, you know?
Speaker 19 And so the success of psychopaths, especially the pro-social or borderline pro-social psychopaths, is a reflection of people's own lack of morals, I think, because to win, they want them on their side, even though they know that they're probably going to do it.
Speaker 19
It's like, don't tell me what you did, just win, you know. Those traits are very much enjoyed and beloved by people.
So, you say, What are you complaining about?
Speaker 19 But, you know, if you want to find out if you're a psychopath, you got to go talk to a psychologist, psychiatrist, who's an expert in personality disorders. There's no other way.
Speaker 19 But once you are found out to have something, then we can use the brain scans and the genetics to know why you're that way.
Speaker 20 This puts you another world because, see,
Speaker 20 people
Speaker 20 aren't expected to murder people.
Speaker 20 And when you murder someone and
Speaker 20 you have their life in your hand,
Speaker 20 just think of
Speaker 20 no one else has been there but you.
Speaker 20 And think of
Speaker 20 all your feelings, all your emotions, put all in the one, the hurt that you have and the love that you have and joy and hate and just everything, all your emotions you could ever put together.
Speaker 20 And that's what murder's like.
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Speaker 2 If you can't compare your users' workflows before and after adding AI, how do you know it's even paying off?
Speaker 8 Pendo Agent Analytics is the first tool to connect agent prompts and conversations to downstream outcomes like time saved so you know what's working and what to fix.
Speaker 6 Start improving agent performance at pendo.io slash podcast.
Speaker 7 That's pendo.io slash podcast.
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Speaker 22 There are certain books that don't just give you information, they shift the way you see the world. I remember reading one when I was younger that completely changed me.
Speaker 22
Years later, I found myself thinking about that book again. I wanted the same edition back.
not a reprint, not a different cover, that exact one. So I started searching.
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Speaker 14 After Fallon was able to give an evolutionary and historical explanation of psychopathy, Melissa was finally ready to face and accept her results.
Speaker 19
So I gave this kind of a general like how we do stuff. You know, I really look at the science and the biological psychiatry of it.
And so would you like to know what I saw by looking at your scans?
Speaker 20 I would love to.
Speaker 17
I'm ready. You sure? Yeah, I'm absolutely ready.
Yeah. I think after talking with you, I now see that it might not necessarily be a bad thing, but I'm just curious now.
Speaker 19 A touch of psychopathy can be a very useful thing. It doesn't make you criminal or bad, but you can still be a pain in the ass to be around with some of these, right? I mean, you really can.
Speaker 19
So you got to be on and you got to expect that from people. Okay, I'm ready.
I'm ready.
Speaker 17 I'll follow you.
Speaker 14 Dr. Fallon's office was filled with eclectic art he'd gathered during his travels or was given over the years.
Speaker 14 It also showcased some of his own signature paintings, which tended to involve some very interesting and more than slightly disturbing depictions of clowns, demented-looking clowns.
Speaker 19 So I have a serious night. Okay.
Speaker 19 Okay.
Speaker 19 So
Speaker 19
there's many ways to get a PET scan or a functional MRI. Okay.
You can get a CAT scan or a regular MRI that just looks at the anatomy.
Speaker 19
But this is then looking at the function. That's the main thing.
The task that you did, we could have you do other tasks that test your empathy. Okay.
Speaker 19 Before you go in there for a PET scan or while you're doing it for fMRI, you can be looking at a mix of images of things that in normal people provoke emotional empathy. Okay.
Speaker 19
versus cognitive empathy. You could go through different kinds of scans that probe different circuits in in your brain.
Then we can compare it to normal people and full-blown psychopaths.
Speaker 19 And really to fully do it, you have to do all these different scans.
Speaker 19 That's why it's hard for people, the average person, to do it, because it becomes expensive, and you got to get into a pipeline, like a research hospital pipeline. But at any rate, you had it done.
Speaker 19
So you had the basic PET scan, and you didn't have a task. That is, you didn't have to look at scary pictures or disgusting things.
You were just told to what?
Speaker 17 Close my eyes and for about 20 minutes I just kept my eyes closed and I was relaxed. I didn't see anything and I try to keep my mind centered and not distracted.
Speaker 19 Okay so this is kind of a the non-task task and now it's called the default mode network we're looking for. Okay.
Speaker 19 And it's a circuitry that we should see these areas of the brain in a normal person light up.
Speaker 19 And these are connected areas that most people's lives are in this mode because you're kind of daydreaming or you're relaxed. You know,
Speaker 19 There's no task there. And so a lot of your life is in this mode.
Speaker 19 And if you look at the connectivity of this circuit, of this, plus with your limbic system, your emotional parts of your brain, you can really get an idea on why somebody is a certain way.
Speaker 19
You are simply given this task, and it sounds like the way you've described it is exactly. correct.
And here's the raw scans. Part of the raw scans are up here without any processing.
Speaker 19
So this is ground truth. Okay.
And here is your PET scan. Again, it's not doctored with colors or anything.
Okay. Because usually you see a PET scan, it's like there's blues and reds and stuff.
Speaker 19
Right, there's a thing. And that's made in software and it's kind of fudged a bit.
It doesn't mean it's wrong, but it's fudged. This is like ground pure truth.
Speaker 19 And so wherever we see the dark areas,
Speaker 19 you see right here? They're dark. That's what has really turned on in that half hour before you'd got the PET scan.
Speaker 19 And so here
Speaker 19 you are, and here's the normal.
Speaker 19 And I tried to this morning try to match them up if I could.
Speaker 19 And it turns out
Speaker 19
yours is completely normal. So this first test at this is like your clinical scan is completely normal.
So you don't have any problem in your brain that anybody can see.
Speaker 19
And anatomically, it's not like you have little tumors or anything like that. And there's no weirdness at all.
It's completely normal. And now when we looked at this,
Speaker 19 they really match up.
Speaker 19 You look like a completely normal for this test.
Speaker 19
That's amazing. Yeah, it's amazing.
It could be normal, yeah.
Speaker 19 It could be disappointing, too.
Speaker 19
So, I mean, again, this is not diagnostic, but you have a quite a normal reaction. And you see how sort of hot you are down here.
Right. I cannot turn this part of my brain off at all.
Wow.
Speaker 19 So, when I do default mode, I can't turn that on. And so, that's a psychopathic pattern.
Speaker 17 But mine's hot.
Speaker 19 It's hot. It's normal.
Speaker 14 and so after years of wondering if her father's genes had somehow infected her with the same traits the same buried evil tendencies melissa could finally breathe a sigh of relief knowing that she was another step in the opposite direction of keith
Speaker 17
The power that he had over me, now I feel like he doesn't have any power over me anymore. I feel like I'm my own person.
I feel liberated. I almost feel like I got out of jail.
Speaker 17 I feel so much better.
Speaker 17 I almost wish I would have done this a long time ago that I would have not have been running away but I would have never been ready for it I don't think like I am now.
Speaker 17 But I feel amazing. I feel like I'm my own person
Speaker 17 and free.
Speaker 17 Now I'm excited about moving forward in the future.
Speaker 17 Like I can this is less energy devoted to worry the energy that I've been using scared of my connection with my dad can now be used for something useful and purposeful and it gives me everything that I need to just look to the future instead of to the past.
Speaker 18 you know what I see?
Speaker 18 You may know what I do,
Speaker 18 but you don't know me.
Speaker 18 You could have that too,
Speaker 18 but you'd rather be free.
Speaker 18 Be free.
Speaker 14 In the final happy face, Melissa comes to a reckoning with her past, her present, and her future.
Speaker 13
Happy Face is a production of How Stuff Works. Executive producers are Melissa Moore, Lauren Bright-Pacheco, Mangesh Hatikador, and Will Pearson.
Supervising producer is Noel Brown.
Speaker 13
Music by Claire Campbell, Paige Campbell, and Hope for a Golden Summer. Story editor is Matt Riddle.
Audio editing by Chandler Mays and Noel Brown. Assistant editor is Taylor Shacoyne.
Speaker 13 Special thanks to Phil Stanford, the publishers of the Oregonian newspaper, and the Carlisle family.
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Speaker 23 Hey guys, it's Aaron Andrews from Calm Down with Erin and Carissa. So as a sideline reporter, game day is extra busy for me, but I know it can be busy for parents everywhere.
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Speaker 25 This is Michael Lewis from Against the Rules, the big short companion.
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