You entirely derailed the topic by being dismissive of about 350 million people and just saying you don’t give a fuck about them.

Thats not relevant or productive to attempting to seriously discuss broad social dynamics, at all, whatsoever.

And now you’re just openly insulting me directly and personally, and you’re now acting as if you are an authority figure who can direct the flow of this conversation.

You seem to have a bit of an anti-American/anti-homeless chip on your shoulder, and I don’t much care for the sociopath vibes you’re giving me, so I’ll be blocking you now.

Uh, I am not intentionally trolling anyone.

To the best of my understanding… CBT has the largest amount of empirical data showing it actually helps a broad variety of people.

Yes, of course there are other forms of therapy that are more targetted and helpful for people with specific, identified conditions or diagnoses, or specific kinds of past trauma, etc.

This is why I phrased the sentence the way I did, with ‘basically’ as a qualifier, said ‘most’ people. I suppose I could have been a bit more clear and concise with that, my apologies.

There’s no need to catastrophize and read a boat load of ill intent into what I said; we can have a good faith conversation here if you want to.

What are other broadly empirically verified to be helpful therapy methods that help a broad range of people?

I would genuinely like to know, so I could look into them.

I’ve heard DBT is showing promise, but I’ve not heard it is as widely empirically evidenced and verified, yet.

I also freely admit that I could have some details and specifics wrong here… I am after all recovering from 2 years of homelessness, multiple concussions, contusions, etc.

This is like, how conversations work, right?

If someone says something you know is false… you don’t immediately assume they are an intentional badfaith disinfo agent, you instead say hey, you said this, I think that’s incorrect, and let me tell you why.

Though I do have to point out the irony of me saying that I often encounter many psych field people who needlessly read hostile intent into what I say… and then you are here literally exemplifying that, by having a very emotionally charged reaction, while identifying yourself as being in the psych field.

Now flip that around and anytime you see or a hear a woman saying her man isn’t emotionally available, just tell her he isn’t your therapist.

… Do you see how this kind of framing is wildly unproductive, when either side engages in it?

You are the one that made this all about what does and doesn’t apply to a specific area or country, into being a pro or anti whatever specific nationality discussion.

Like I don’t disagree that we should fix our own country, it is our responsibility… but you could have just said ‘Damn, is it really that bad in the States?’ or something like that, without being dismissive and hostile for… basically the only reason is you’re tired of hearing about America I guess?

???

Sorry I exist?

You reply to an anecdote (well really more of a logical argument but w/e) with an anecdote.

Astounding level of intellectual discussion going on here.

Cool, I’m glad you’re so enlightened and open minded as to uh … not give a fuck about perspectives from places you aren’t from.

As for you telling me how to use an internet message board… what more do you want from me?

I told you where I am from and what I am talking about.

I’d love to be able to move to Europe and get away from this fucking imploding hell hole of morons.

But I am broke and physically disabled after being the victim of numerous physical assaults.

Are any of ya’ll accepting disabled American aslyum seekers, so we can easily enjoy your civilized world?

Didn’t think so.

Gender and sex broadly influence socialization and communication norms in many ways.

Yep, there are many cases where people do not conform to standard gender/sex norms… but the norms do still broadly, empirically exist or have a physiological basis.

Personally, I am all for breaking down gender norms and stereotypes and roles, and everyone being accepting of more variance and deviation from the norm, as many people do not neatly adhere to the patriarchal hetero dichotomy norm.

… But many still do.

Especially where I am right now, in a poor red state (had to move quite far to find somewhere I could afford to rent), where the education quality is laughable, and traditional gender/sex norms are very prevalent, there are no legal protections against discrimination against queer, disabled persons such as myself.

they’re checking their own understanding by giving you an opportunity to correct them. by rephrasing it identically, it doesnt build any new understanding.

Yes, I understand the purpose of doing that… but they will rephrase it with different words, different meanings, leave out qualifiers, or add in qualifiers, etc.

Many times, the rephrasing doesn’t change the meaning, and I agree, no problem.

But sometimes, specific wording or phrasing matters greatly.

I’ve found this is a concept many neurotypicals generally struggle with, that you can’t always just reform a sentence into something easier to parse… because that can lose complexity and precision, and I am trying to convey something complex and precise.

And more often, when I object to my words being reformed… it is women who view my objection as aggressive, agitated, rude, hostile, combatative, etc.

does it not matter to you to be understood by others?

Broadly, I am well understood by most of the people I interact with.

Other than people clumsily trying to psychoanalyze me, and manipulative sociopath/narcissist types.

So no, I do not generally worry about my communication skills, as I have no problem communicating with the vast majority of people.

…

For instance… I am aware that I am often rather verbose, and tend to ramble… thats actually a sign that I feel comfortable, and trust whoever I am talking to.

I am also aware that this can be verbally, conversationally overwhelming with people who think it is rude to interrupt.

So I just tell people, hey, i have a tendency to ramble, I will not be offended at all if you interject and politely tell me to shut it, refocus, try to summarize, etc, when I am obviously rambling to tangential topics, or just telling a long story or something.

And this works very well with people who can gather the… courage? to do this, as I genuinely do not find it offensive.

But with people who are for whatever reason so timid that even after I’ve given them explicit permission to interrupt me… they still don’t actually do it… well, they tend to be frustrated with me, overwhelmed.

Normally, thats fine, I don’t need to be everyone’s friend.

But when its someone who I basically have little or no choice but to communicate with that particulsr person… yes, this can lead to problems.

maybe that’s why you’re bashing therapy on the internet, asking for CBT worksheets instead of building rapport, and indirectly praising relationships with LLMs?

So for starters, I quite explicitly said that I think using LLMs for therapy is a ‘fucking horrible idea’, I just didn’t expand on that as much… as to me this is fairly self evident and obvious.

So we now see that you are… doing the thing.

You are putting words in my mouth, because what I specifically said was evidently too complex for you to fully parse, and now you’ve reformulated it into a bastardized form that is actually contradictory to what I said.

Your poor reading comprehension skills are not my problem.

…

Secondly… I am not bashing therapy broadly, I think it is a great concept when well executed and easily accessible.

CBT in particular is more than just a set of paperwork… it is often very helpful to have a therapist use CBT methods, guidr someone through it in person.

I have been to a good number of therapists who’ve used CBT methods and they have been quite helpful… I am trying to say that I just needed a refresher, a paper copy, and after that, its been like getting back on a bicycle, I remember my training, lol.

…

Also as far as building rapport: I don’t really care to, as I am currently in a relatively temporary living situation, month to month rent, and I fully plan on moving to somewhere with more robust social safety nets and a better mental health support system, public transit system, etc, as soon as I am able, as soon as my PT has been effective enough that I am cleared by my PT team.

As I already mentioned… there are literally no therapists in the state I am currently in, via the health insurancd I can even barely afford… that are qualified and specialized to help an adult with autism.

Not sure where you are, but in the US broadly, there are hardly any psychologists or therapists that are properly qualified to treat high functioning adults with autism.

They are rare, expensive, and have huge waitlists.

I’m in a quite poor red state at the moment, with no highly reputable schools or psychology departments.

Here, autism = you’re retarded, and its only ever evaluated as a ‘disability’ affecting children.

… So my plan is to try to get to where some actual civilization and professionals exist, and to the greatest extent possible, avoid useless or harmful advice from overconfident and untrained specialists who have to pull out the DSM V to understand a reference I am making.

Seems rational to me?

I mean, to a certain degree this is broadly true.

Like we have the numbers, younger generations are waaaay less likely to have had a relationship or sexual encounter by the same age/stage in their life as compared to previous generations, way more people just are relationship inexperienced.

This goes for both genders/sexes, though it is more prominent with younger men than women.

The overwhelming problem is that in the US, so much in person socialization is expensive, basically pay-gated, paywalled.

There are very few third places you can just hang out at for no cost. Public transit sucks or is non existant, cars are super unaffordable due to collapsing economy, and all our cities are designed for using cars to drive from place to place… so very few places are actually walk-navigable…

Everyone is increasingly overweight and overworked (or over homeworked, for students) and overstressed, so they can’t or don’t engage in group meet up hobbies or sports as much as they used to… and ironically even religiosity levels overall trending down means less people are going to church… all the traditional methods of getting socialization and expanding out a friend network in real life are withering.

So, the easier path is to get your socialization, of all kinds, primarily digitally.

But all those most common and popular ways of doing that are also massively manipulative with algos intentionally feeding you whatever ragebait slop appeals to you, personally.

It is very ironic that, as basically a 90s kid myself, very early tech adopter… my view of the vast majority of social media now is that it is basically a mentally harmful and addictive drug that people need to detox from… but when I tell younger people that, they say things like ‘its not that deep bro, everybody has a (whatever) profile’.

There are lots of studies that show that very common levels of social media app usage… do actually reduce attention spans, spread dangerous misinformation, lower academic performance, cause negative self esteem by way of unrealistic standards, of beauty, lifestyle, wealth… brainrot is real, basically.

Like, I am all for the TikTok ban for kids. But also ban all short form video content for kids. Instagram, Youtube shorts, whatever.

This shit is melting peoples brains, it needs to be treated the same way you’d treat a drug epidemic.

We are now at the point where kids give so little of a fuck, have such tiny attention spans and need for constant, rapid fire stimulation… that half of adult Americans read below a 6th grade level, 20-30% of them read below a 2nd grade level, making them functionally illiterate… and thats just with Gen Z now mostly being in those young adult numbers, its gonna be even worse when Gen Alpha graduates and starts trying to enter society/the workforce.

EDIT:

This isn’t even broadly unprecedented.

Look at Japan.

Hikkikomori.

The stagnant economy becomes overly financialized and corporatized and impossibly demanding… so people just drop out of it, or worse, kill themselves from the stress of trying to live up to its expectations…

And well then yeah, in person socializing broadly drops, relationship dynamics become strained and morph, birth rate plummets.

Give it 5 or 10 years and we’ll have something resembling rent a boyfriend/girlfriend services and maid / stud cafes as well, as the stereotypified fascimile of socialization and having a real relstionship becomes a marketable product, and then industry.

Maybe a few areas will even properly legalize and regulate prostitution.

Granted, that’ll be in any areas that remain even kind of blue.

The red areas will just go full theocrat and send you to jail for masturbating, but also re-legalize child marriage, and rework marriage laws into ‘covenant marriage’, where basically the woman functionally cannot divorce the husband.

In summary: cyberpunk hypercapitalism is in fact very very bad for healthy human relationship dynamics.

The flip side of that is vast numbers of Gen Z Men saying many Gen Z women are basically misandrists, who asked them to stop interacting with them unprompted, no more unwanted attention… so they did that, they stopped… and now all they see is IG and TikToks of Gen Z Women complaining that no one asks them out on dates anymore, no one is 6’ tall with a 6 figure income becore the age of 30, and willing to worship them as a queen.

I am not saying this is any kind of objectively accurate to whatever degree, but I am saying that this is the very common, general vibe.

So, in that situation: Why bother?

Many men can actually be fulfilled just staying actually single, as in not even dating single, snd getting their own lives, finances, health, to a better place.

Yes this does though also mean that … because we’ve just got less general, face to face socialization going on that… basically a larger than otherwise number of them will basically develop harmful, reinforcing neuroses, in harmful echo chambers… but at the same time, that applies to women as well.

This is what happens when you jam a broad economic collapse up alongside a highly digital and publicized modern media landscape that is tweaked all to fuck to highlight and push the most extreme version of everything… along with extremely mixed messaging that an only digitally socialized person recieves, but all as a firehose, that is very hard to make true sense of.

So… fuck this shit I’m out… social withdrawal… basically becomes a reasonable mental health improving move, even if it does leave you kinda socially stunted as compared to pre-internet generations.

One thing that really lifts my mood is singing.

I’m a reasonably decent natural baritone…

For the longest while, I couldn’t, due to fucked up abdomen… couldn’t use my diaphragm right.

But… thats getting better now, the PT is slow, arduous, and painful, but it is working.

I was just in another thread posting Johnny Cash lyrics as a contrast to how shitty of a little turdboy Andrew Tate is.

I fell in… to a burnin ring of fire… and so on, haha.

Oh I mean, I’m honestly fine.

Had some real bad PTSD style flashback shit for a while, from being homeless for roughly 2 years, still jump at sudden noises and lights, but I’ve been that way forever, yay for abusive family growing up…

But I only recently did a full check in with all kinds of medical specialists to reorient after I finally stopped being homeless, found a shithole that ain’t too shitty, that I can afford to rent… literally, I just wanted a paper copy of the CBT procedures, because they’ve worked well, honestly very well for me in the past…

And I now have numerous physical injuries from being homeless so long, getting the shit kicked out of me every other week, getting my shit stolen every other day, almost dying from now both a blizzard and a heat wave… SSDI needs you to actually have current medical contacts so they can pull records from them… and I had to get as much of my old MyChart files back together, I don’t even remember how many phones I had that kept getting stolen, email accounts I lost access to.

I appreciate the suggestion, but I seriously have never been as mentally free of stress as I am now:

All I gotta do is focus on PT, then try to either get back to a job or start my own software freelancing gig… maybe make a video game… just gotta heal up my wrist and leg and back and ass a bit more, so I can actually sit and type at a 'puter for more than 15 minutes at a time w/o terrible pain.

I honestly love being a hermit, away from my abusive family… I’m not lonely at all, I love the solitude, lemmy is really 95% of what I need for social interactions and excercising my own brain, and of course every once in a while, I hobble with my cane down and chit chat with a neighbor or two.

Basically, nearly everyone in my life I’ve ever trusted or loved has abused or manipulated me in some way… not literally all, of course, but the vast, vast majority… so fuck em.

Im happier off without em, and I now literally know that I can keep myself alive in the absolute worst possible situation… but, I’m still 95% immobile, don’t have a car anymore, that got stolen, so its not like I could meet people and have a real social life anyway.

Gotta heal the body first, literally get back on my feet. Been fixing up my financial situation best I can while I’m mostly bed ridden.

PTSD attacks and night terrors … and that instant jump to ‘ready to defend myself with potentially lethal force’… yeah, that’s dissapated significantly with the CBT excercises, and simply having my own, controlled environment, with relatively little external responsibilities… just took time.

Wait, we have one of those?

Genuienly had no idea.

This is a great example of the kinds of problems that can crop up.

Fish doesn’t realize its swimming in water, kind of thing.

One approach is basically just gaslighting you:

The things that bother you and cause you trouble… well they just shouldn’t, and you should be fine with that.

The other approach is… you know, actually diagnostic, and can lead to… actually useful diagnosis, and thus more specified therapy and potentially other kinds of help.

As an autist, I’ve gone through many similar situations.

Sex/Gender independent… just 90% of therapists don’t get it all. Always try to diagnose me with something else, and its different every time.

Doesn’t matter that I’ve done the full RAADS V test and I’m basically off thr charts autistic, rofl.

Half of them have never even heard of it.

Then I get stuck on … well they will rephrsse what I just said, and say/ask it back to me, and I’ll say no, no I phrased what I said specifically, because I meant exactly that.

Then I see in their notes later that I am ‘arguementative’ or ‘agitated’ or ‘aggressive’… far, fsr more often if its a woman psych/soc worker/counselor who I am… not even ‘correcting’, just trying to not have them put words in my mouth.

Men tend to be less intimidated and more open to my insistance that I meant exactly what I said… and I am talking in the same voice, same mannerisms, same everything, with everyone.

Some women get it, most don’t, some men get it, most don’t.

… But the field is vastly disproportionately populated with women.

So the end result for a lot of guys is… hey look, another woman that isn’t really listening to me.

Wow thanks, I never would have thought of that!!!

Oh jeez, the copay is… $80 bucks?

Boy, I could have just looked that up on the interwebz… uh, outside, of course, on a laptop.

The performative masculinity of many men is also reinforced by partriarchichal norms in many women, who consistently belittle men who attempt to express their emotions without judgement, who demand macho men, who belittle men who aren’t financially better off than them.

Men can’t talk to most men, and they can’t talk to most women, society in general still largely demands they conform to the ‘bottle it all in, buck up and deal with it’ norm that is so very obviously harmful to men, and whoever they eventually take it out on when they have a breakdown.

… These are broad generalizations, but they are still broadly accurate.

Yep, the psychology industry/field has been unfair to women for a long, long time, often hideously so.

But no widespread progress on deconstructing and at least softening male machismo norms will be possible until we as a society acknowledge that… men are not the only sex/gender that often have ingrained patriarchal norms.

I go to a therapist and she treats me like a five year old.

I can literally just read her basic CBT training online, its not hard to find.

Then I do the excercises at home.

CBT being basically the only kind of approach to therapy that is actually empirically shown to reliably actually help most people.

Oh, you’re seeking an therapist qualified and specialized for high functioning autists?

There aren’t any in the state anymore.

…

I also think that using ChatGPT as a therapist is a fucking horrible idea, but uh, therapy in America is expensive, and often shit quality, oh and they just hand out pills that you’ll become dependent on, willy nilly, as opposed to trying everything else first and using that as a last resort.

Ah, see, I’m not an accelerationist because I am not within the top 10% of the wealth holders in my society, I am in fact disabled and crippled, and thus stand a very, very good chance at dying fairly quickly if the entire national (and to a great extent, world) economy suddenly collapses.

If you think the pain and suffering is bad now… and don’t get me wrong, it is…

Well, multiply it by between 100x to 1000x, thats what a completely uncontrolled or horrendously mismanaged economic collapse will do.

Rampant homeless and famine. Massively increased military adventurism. Migrant Crises.

I’d rather uh, not make things even worse, for billions of people, cause tens to hundreds of millions of unnecessary deaths?

Like, you do realize that all the hypercapitalist tech bro accelerationists… they’re the ones that invented, popularized, and push the modern concept of accelerationism, right?

Because they’ll emerge as kings.

And most of us will just die, or become slaves.

Because they will be trained on what all of those people say, and then they will also make nonsense mistakes that don’t even make sense according to that logic.

Kinda like how Trump has a fundamentally nonsensical economic policy, because he doesn’t understand the underlying dynamics, he just knows the surface level rhetoric for a slew of policy positions, which when taken altogether at the same time, are mutually contradictory and inconsistent.

That’ll be the level of logic you’re plugging directly into the even more arcane and technically complex fields of large scale finance and accounting.

It would blow things up even faster, and from a more fundamental level.

We are already on the way to the dollar collapsing and the us defaulting on its debt.

Putting a bunch of overconfident, gaslighting autocorrect algos inside the fundamental workings of the finanical system would accelerate that process.

Please remember these LLMs hallucinate evidence and facts that are not real all the time, they have no capacity to reason nor analyze, they can only synthesize the average of whatever their algo determines is relevant to your input to them.

This could very easily lead to widespread, 0 trust in the reliability of any reported numbers or metrics of anything that uses LLMs, and generally speaking, when people lose confidence it the legitimacy of a financial organization’s books… well that organization gets shorted, dumped, bank runs, etc.

Would you trust an LLM to manage your own monthly budget numbers and categorize things properly?

These things couldn’t even figure out how many r’s are in strawberry untill fairly recently.

Oh fuck, we are beyond fucked.

Yep, lets just hook up shitty LLMs to the world’s financial system, what could possibly go wrong?!