I’ve been in therapy. I understand the tools and techniques. I’ve done CBT, DBT, ACT, and others. I’ve been in residential programs, inpatient, intensive outpatient, regular outpatient, you name it. It can give me a place to vent, get me geared up with tools and excited to start again, a new start, a fresh day, whatever.
But when I go back into society with all my tools from therapy, I still get the same response as always. People don’t like me, they never have and they never will. And I got tired of being gaslit by my therapists that my problems were all in my head and I just need to reframe them.
I’ve had a decade of adulthood to “grow,” and I focused intensely on self-help, personal growth, all that stuff. I followed every avenue I could find. And at the end of it all, people only thought it made me self-absorbed. Any social skill I’ve tried to learn and practice, people sense the unnaturalness and think I’m being a manipulator with some sort of dark psychology techniques. No, it read about “mirroring” and stuff like that in books on interpersonal communication and conflict resolution. Not some narcissist’s field manual.
So I have two choices: be awkward and cringe, but genuinely awkward and cringe; or try to be normal, but in a contrived and inauthentic way. I cannot be genuinely normal. That option is not available to me.
Sorry about the traumas you’ve faced, and I’m glad you could come out on top of it. But you need to recognize that you’re the exception rather than the rule. You can’t expect everyone to turn out well just because you did.
I spent most of my early twenties as a recluse. I spent my mid-twenties trying to overcome my social anxiety, social ineptitude, and generally trying to integrate into society. I was constantly buffeted by judgement and ill-will, but for years I didn’t let it keep me down. I kept trying. I was persistent.
By my mid-to-late twenties, it began to seem insurmountable, my frustrations grew, challenges escalated, and I started cracking. I think there were also some external factors like being doxxed/cybergangstalked, threatened, harassed, gaslit, and all kinds of nastiness. I couldn’t prove anything so my doctors called it psychosis.
Anyway, my anxiety reached a crescendo and I began regularly fighting panic attacks. A couple breakdowns later I had my first trip to the mental hospital, which was only more traumatizing. I’ve been in others since which were more professional, but I’m fairly certain that first one was torturing me (both physically and psychologically) under cover of “treatment.”
It was the beginning of a long, slow spiral. I fought to stay afloat all along the way, but things only got worse the more I fought it, like quick sand. It was a long tumble, with plenty of bumps all along the way. I even got arrested at one point for “disorderly conduct” while having an acute psychological episode.
Anyway, several trips to the psych ward later, multiple times in residential therapy, I’ve given up on thrashing. I don’t go in public anymore. I don’t even go to the fucking grocery store, say what you will but I get them delivered.
I’ll probably never be able to get hired again, even without the apocalyptic nosedive the job market is taking. Even if I could convince someone to hire me, I probably wouldn’t be able to hold a job for very long.
I’ve spiralled too far to try to make a recovery, especially when for every five steps I try to climb, I end up falling thirty. Don’t try to give me hope, I don’t need that poison.
Yeah, the person you describe in your last paragraph sounds like me. But it’s a lot less endearing to be a man and need constant reassurance. Women like that have a chance. I don’t.
you will end up still bitter and blaming the world just like she does
I can tell. I tried to be supportive and understanding here instead of just ragging on you, which I definitely could have. You have rejected it out of hand with excuses of why it just makes sense for you to be bitter and hateful. I don’t know what else to tell you. That’s on you.
Also, I definitely don’t think I’m the exception rather than the rule considering how many men I know who have had similar traumas and are also well adjusted adults who don’t blame the whole world for their problems.
If people can’t blame the world for their problems, then why the fuck should any of us care about systemic oppression? It’s the same logic. Blame the people who suffer for their own conditions.
If my problems don’t matter, then no one’s do. Or am I some special exception where everyone else’s problems matter except mine?
It’s absolutely not the same logic. You not being able to get loving people in your life as an individual because of a bad attitude and outlook is not in any way the same as systemic oppression. You are not being systemically oppressed because your shitty outlook and attitude makes you not likeable. You not having people who like you in your life is not anything like people being kidnapped in the streets for being the wrong race or having the wrong politics, being denied legal counsel, food, water, or reasonable living facilities and then being disappeared to a country they’ve never been to. The comparison is honestly laughable.
You’re desperately looking for any way to justify being an angry bitter sad sack. I don’t know what to tell you.
It’s the first one, I promise. The second one is just the excuse you give yourself. It’s a choice you’re making to be bitter and unlikable, as much as you want to pretend it’s not.
Okay, then I’ll go back in time and tell my five-year-old self that it’s actually my fault that I’m being picked on, that I’m just genuinely unlikeable and need to stop being bitter.
Maybe then I’ll earn my dad’s approval, and everyone who’s taken advantage of me, bullied me, or treated me like a pushover ever since will magically respect me.
You’re an adult, and you don’t change it by telling your child self that, you change it by having some fucking self respect and not blaming every person who has mistreated you for why you should never trust or be kind to anyone else ever. Your own inability to accept your own lack of boundaries when it comes to being taken advantage of or treated like a pushover is evidence of that. I’ve been hurt too, but I also see when I made mistakes, didn’t set clear boundaries, and how that impacted the situations a great deal. I have also seen when my own bad attitude has led people to dislike me, and so I dropped the bad attitude, because it hurt me more than helped me, and honestly, I’m much happier for it. You really ought to try it sometime.
So if I have weak boundaries and let people take advantage of me, then it’s my fault and I can’t blame others?
But when a woman has weak boundaries and gets taken advantage of, it’s not her fault and she can blame men as a whole and take it out on men who had nothing to do with it?
Do you not see the double-standard here? Doesn’t that reinforce gender stereotypes where “Men just need to take it on the chin, be a man, be tough. You’re responsible for your own destiny. Not women though, they’re subject to conditions and don’t have any agency or control over their lives.”?
Whenever I point this out, people get upset. As if I’m the one advocating for the stereotype. I’m not. I’m pointing out how it endures in the common mentality that we’re discussing here.
I’ve been in therapy. I understand the tools and techniques. I’ve done CBT, DBT, ACT, and others. I’ve been in residential programs, inpatient, intensive outpatient, regular outpatient, you name it. It can give me a place to vent, get me geared up with tools and excited to start again, a new start, a fresh day, whatever.
But when I go back into society with all my tools from therapy, I still get the same response as always. People don’t like me, they never have and they never will. And I got tired of being gaslit by my therapists that my problems were all in my head and I just need to reframe them.
I’ve had a decade of adulthood to “grow,” and I focused intensely on self-help, personal growth, all that stuff. I followed every avenue I could find. And at the end of it all, people only thought it made me self-absorbed. Any social skill I’ve tried to learn and practice, people sense the unnaturalness and think I’m being a manipulator with some sort of dark psychology techniques. No, it read about “mirroring” and stuff like that in books on interpersonal communication and conflict resolution. Not some narcissist’s field manual.
So I have two choices: be awkward and cringe, but genuinely awkward and cringe; or try to be normal, but in a contrived and inauthentic way. I cannot be genuinely normal. That option is not available to me.
Sorry about the traumas you’ve faced, and I’m glad you could come out on top of it. But you need to recognize that you’re the exception rather than the rule. You can’t expect everyone to turn out well just because you did.
I spent most of my early twenties as a recluse. I spent my mid-twenties trying to overcome my social anxiety, social ineptitude, and generally trying to integrate into society. I was constantly buffeted by judgement and ill-will, but for years I didn’t let it keep me down. I kept trying. I was persistent.
By my mid-to-late twenties, it began to seem insurmountable, my frustrations grew, challenges escalated, and I started cracking. I think there were also some external factors like being doxxed/cybergangstalked, threatened, harassed, gaslit, and all kinds of nastiness. I couldn’t prove anything so my doctors called it psychosis.
Anyway, my anxiety reached a crescendo and I began regularly fighting panic attacks. A couple breakdowns later I had my first trip to the mental hospital, which was only more traumatizing. I’ve been in others since which were more professional, but I’m fairly certain that first one was torturing me (both physically and psychologically) under cover of “treatment.”
It was the beginning of a long, slow spiral. I fought to stay afloat all along the way, but things only got worse the more I fought it, like quick sand. It was a long tumble, with plenty of bumps all along the way. I even got arrested at one point for “disorderly conduct” while having an acute psychological episode.
Anyway, several trips to the psych ward later, multiple times in residential therapy, I’ve given up on thrashing. I don’t go in public anymore. I don’t even go to the fucking grocery store, say what you will but I get them delivered.
I’ll probably never be able to get hired again, even without the apocalyptic nosedive the job market is taking. Even if I could convince someone to hire me, I probably wouldn’t be able to hold a job for very long.
I’ve spiralled too far to try to make a recovery, especially when for every five steps I try to climb, I end up falling thirty. Don’t try to give me hope, I don’t need that poison.
Yeah, the person you describe in your last paragraph sounds like me. But it’s a lot less endearing to be a man and need constant reassurance. Women like that have a chance. I don’t.
I already am, dude.
I can tell. I tried to be supportive and understanding here instead of just ragging on you, which I definitely could have. You have rejected it out of hand with excuses of why it just makes sense for you to be bitter and hateful. I don’t know what else to tell you. That’s on you.
Also, I definitely don’t think I’m the exception rather than the rule considering how many men I know who have had similar traumas and are also well adjusted adults who don’t blame the whole world for their problems.
If people can’t blame the world for their problems, then why the fuck should any of us care about systemic oppression? It’s the same logic. Blame the people who suffer for their own conditions.
If my problems don’t matter, then no one’s do. Or am I some special exception where everyone else’s problems matter except mine?
It’s absolutely not the same logic. You not being able to get loving people in your life as an individual because of a bad attitude and outlook is not in any way the same as systemic oppression. You are not being systemically oppressed because your shitty outlook and attitude makes you not likeable. You not having people who like you in your life is not anything like people being kidnapped in the streets for being the wrong race or having the wrong politics, being denied legal counsel, food, water, or reasonable living facilities and then being disappeared to a country they’ve never been to. The comparison is honestly laughable.
You’re desperately looking for any way to justify being an angry bitter sad sack. I don’t know what to tell you.
Am I unlikeable because I’m bitter or am I bitter because I’m unlikeable?
It’s the first one, I promise. The second one is just the excuse you give yourself. It’s a choice you’re making to be bitter and unlikable, as much as you want to pretend it’s not.
Okay, then I’ll go back in time and tell my five-year-old self that it’s actually my fault that I’m being picked on, that I’m just genuinely unlikeable and need to stop being bitter.
Maybe then I’ll earn my dad’s approval, and everyone who’s taken advantage of me, bullied me, or treated me like a pushover ever since will magically respect me.
You’re an adult, and you don’t change it by telling your child self that, you change it by having some fucking self respect and not blaming every person who has mistreated you for why you should never trust or be kind to anyone else ever. Your own inability to accept your own lack of boundaries when it comes to being taken advantage of or treated like a pushover is evidence of that. I’ve been hurt too, but I also see when I made mistakes, didn’t set clear boundaries, and how that impacted the situations a great deal. I have also seen when my own bad attitude has led people to dislike me, and so I dropped the bad attitude, because it hurt me more than helped me, and honestly, I’m much happier for it. You really ought to try it sometime.
So if I have weak boundaries and let people take advantage of me, then it’s my fault and I can’t blame others?
But when a woman has weak boundaries and gets taken advantage of, it’s not her fault and she can blame men as a whole and take it out on men who had nothing to do with it?
Do you not see the double-standard here? Doesn’t that reinforce gender stereotypes where “Men just need to take it on the chin, be a man, be tough. You’re responsible for your own destiny. Not women though, they’re subject to conditions and don’t have any agency or control over their lives.”?
Whenever I point this out, people get upset. As if I’m the one advocating for the stereotype. I’m not. I’m pointing out how it endures in the common mentality that we’re discussing here.