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ZT5 comments on Open Thread, Feb. 2 - Feb 8, 2015 - Less Wrong
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I've recently had a discussion about ethics here in this thread, and the conclusion I've arrived at is that a big reason for my lack of motivation is lack of social support.
I don't know if this is the right place to post this, nor am I fully clear on what kind of response I am expecting. I guess I would like advice and emotional support with this issue.
I have basically been in shutdown mode for the past year because I'm not getting the kind of support I need, and I have my doubts I will ever get the kind of support I need.
I am in my mid-twenties, highly intelligent and have nonconformist opinions - I also have had personal difficulties and not lived a very happy life so far. I find myself unable to connect to other people when it comes to personal stuff because most people, even well-meaning ones, can't understand what's going on for me. That goes for mental health professionals as well. And unfortunately people, even mental health professionals, can be surprisingly mean if I point out that their well-meaning opinions or advice aren't working for me - which usually ends up with them going into a death spiral of self-justification and/or hurt feelings.
I doubt therapy would work for me (based on previous experiences), because of the personal connection with the therapist not working, and the information and strategies offered to be of rather mediocre quality - mostly things I already know, things that are rather obvious, things that aren't generally true and things that don't apply to me. I doubt anything would actually work for me actually, except actually solving the underlying problem which is that I don't have a support network, "tribe", or whatever you want to call it. Or at least having a possible solution in sight.
It's not so much about receiving support (although that's a part of it) - I guess I would like to have something meaningful to do. Right now I have an at least partially altruistic mindset, and nothing to direct it at, because I have a hard time liking "people" at large. I would like to have a personal connection to a person or people who I actually feel that I like - because otherwise when I feel like being doing something positive either for specific people or for the world, I don't even have an accessible example of someone who I would want to benefit from the results of that.
So yeah. I'm not sure what to do about this, because I'm not feeling very hopeful at the moment. I find that for whatever reason even things I imagine to would be very basic (like being understood by other people) are really hard to find in reality.
...I notice I am feeling confused about this, because the particular set of experiences I just described seems to be extremely non-typical among people in general, and I'm not expecting it to be
Edit: I don't live in the US (I feel this is worth sharing because it affects the advice/options available).
A mental health professional that get's angry at you for pointing out that some advice doesn't work is either unskilled or is using anger as an alternative strategy to create pressure to change.
I'm myself not a mental health professional but do have quite a bit of coaching training and would never get angry at someone for him finding advice not useful. It's not even in my reservoir of choices if I think it would be helpful.
Unfortunately I don't think that a majority of academically trained psychologists have enough control over their own emotions to not get angry for bad reasons and go into self-justification.
I don't know whether your state reaches depression but to the extend that it does exercise is very important. Do you do exercise?
After exercise the second highest rated intervention on curetogether is to spend time with a pet. In the absence of human interaction, a dog can fill some of that niche. It can give you the feeling that there somebody who accepts you like you are.
Otherwise find a tribe. LW meetups are good. Joining a sports team is also good.
In my experience that is accurate.
To be fair, as long as people stick to the psychologist-client script, and have more-or-less typical problems, they probably will get acceptable treatment.
However, pointing out that what the mental health person is doing isn't working for me, for reasons that person doesn't immediately recognize as valid isn't sticking to the script. (and probably just being more intelligent than that person and having genuinely non-standard opinions isn't sticking to the script either).
That varies. To some extent, yes.
I do regular exercise.
That's interesting. I think that might work for me, but I have I doubts about my ability to arrange for that to happen.
Don't have one in my area (in responding to MathiasZaman's comment, I edited the my original post to reflect that I'm not located in the US).
I would go if there was a meetup in my area.
Merely doing things along other people is typically not enough for me to form connections. And it doesn't sounds interesting or fun enough to me to be worth doing for its own sake.