Thanks!

I’m seeing lots of different tapes from Tesa. Is it PET? PVC?

I’m gonna need a source on that.

Thank you for expanding on that point. I meant it to be a “here’s how we got here” before the rest of my “this is where we are today.”

You’re totally right, and any conversation about men’s behavior at large should include the experiences you just described. Even though we didn’t get ourselves into this situation - in that we didn’t raise ourselves - we’re the ones who will get us out.

I’m a therapist who works almost exclusively with men. Here one pattern I’ve seen often:

• Man is conditioned from a young age not to identify, process or express his feelings
• Man doesn’t share his feelings with anyone - friends, family, partners - for years
• Man sees woman as safe, caring and validating
• Man confides in woman only and continues not sharing feelings with others
• Woman becomes overwhelmed, resentful, dismissive
• Man gets the message that he never should have opened up in the first place

It can be true both that men need to open up more and should not treat their partners as therapists. We all need support systems because no one person can always be available to give us everything we need. It’s not wrong to confide in a partner, but if that partner is the only confidant it’s precarious for both. And I want to emphasize this is not the fault of a man, or men as a community. This is the result of generations of conditioning from both men and women, and both men and women play a part in the solution. I also want to recognize that many of us don’t have a network of people we could open up to even if we wanted to, and many more can’t afford therapy.

If anyone reading this can afford therapy, I highly recommend it. It’s a place to undo some of that conditioning, to sit with someone who’s committed to listening, caring, and not judging.

young people feeling depressed and isolated is the least of your problems.

Children are the future of EVERY country. The future is looking bleak for young people in the US. Where do you live? Are young people unaffected by social media or what?

Out here in actual civilization though, tik tok youth drama is not representative of reality whatsoever.

That’s the thing though. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around sometimes, but for lots of young people, social media IS their reality. This became even more true during the pandemic. We asked young people to go to school on a screen and pretend it was the same as doing it in person. Why wouldn’t they have the same mindset about chatting, hanging out, flirting, dating, etc.? They don’t see it as simulated socializing, it’s just how they socialize.

This isn’t really an answer to your question, but psychiatrist Arthur Kleinman came up with 8 assessment questions for asking patients to describe their conditions. The questions are designed to allow for cultural or spiritual explanations outside of the typical Western medical model.

• What do you call your problem? What name does it have?
• What do you think caused your problem?
• Why do you think it started when it did?
• What does your sickness do to you? How does it work?
• How severe is your sickness? How long do you expect it to last?
• What do you fear most about your illness?
• What are the biggest problems that your illness has caused for you?
• What kind of treatment do you think you should receive? What are the most important results you hope to receive from treatment?

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. Tautology doesn’t mean obvious or predictable, and you’re basing your argument on faulty premises. The study measured how many politically-aligned couples separated in a 1-year period compared to how many politically-opposed couples did so.

people separate because they have irreconcilable differences

Yes, sometimes that’s a reason people separate.

opposing political views is an irreconcilable difference

It’s sometimes irreconcilable, and sometimes not. Couples with opposing political views are more likely (but not guaranteed) to separate than couples who agree.

the conclusion of the research is that couples with irreconcilable differences are more likely to suffer from the problems associated with irreconcilable differences

Nowhere in the study do they declare political heterogamy an irreconcilable difference, nor could they without 100 years of data. You keep referring to “the proposition” and “the research subject” and “the conclusion” and then inserting your own phrases and concepts that were literally not a part of the study. And this is all in defense of your original comment in which you cast an aspersion on the value of the study and then claimed that you didn’t. You’ve made previous comments with the same low-effort “study finds that water is wet” so I don’t believe we’re both speaking in good faith here.

No one is casting aspersions on the scientific method or the value of research

In your original comment, it seemed like you were questioning why the study was funded, then compared it to another obvious cause-effect about kicking a dog. Did I misunderstand?

the conclusion simply follows naturally from the hypothesis

The conclusion might have confirmed your personal hypothesis, but we don’t assume that any conclusion “naturally follows” a hypothesis without measuring it.

The proposition here is that people who have opposing political views are more likely to be antagonistic to each other, that is a tautology.

The way you phrased it is a tautology, but the study didn’t measure antagonism. It measured whether couples broke up or not.

In the western scientific model, this is how we differentiate truths from anecdotes and assumptions. Not sure why this needs to be repeated in every thread about the results of research.

Jason Momoa. Can’t act, plays every character the same, and can’t seem to keep himself from smirking in every moment of screentime.

Also Paul Dano. Someone else mentioned Leo’s “imposter syndrome” and I would apply that to Dano also. I can’t tell if he’s acting too much or not enough, but he always feels out of place.

I’m with you. It’s like going to college after being homeschooled your whole life. Of course you need to know logistical things like how to submit homework, but those are easy answers to find. You also need to know how the other kids talk and what they’re talking about. It’s hard being out of the loop in regular conversations.

I agree that this is a sickening amount of e-waste, and companies should be responsible for processing/recycling their own waste, but what’s the alternative in this case? Mail the faulty batteries back to Anker?

Oh I don’t at all support what Meta has done, and I don’t trust any company not to harm and exploit users. I was responding to your comment by saying that talking to a chatbot doesn’t necessarily indicate that someone has “bigger problems.” If they’re not in a crisis, and they have reasonable expectations for the chatbot, I can see how it could be a helpful tool. If someone doesn’t have access to a real therapist, and a chatbot helps them feel better in the meantime, I’m not going to gatekeep that experience.

I’m a real-life human therapist (honest!) and while I don’t think it’s a substitute for talking to a real person, I’m happy that some people get some benefit from chatbots. I had a client who used Rosebud Journal in between sessions and found it helpful. I tried out Rosebud myself and I was very impressed with how it replicated the basics like reflective listening and validation. It was even able to reframe my input using various therapy models when I requested it. I didn’t use it for long because I’m not big on journaling, but I wouldn’t dismiss it completely as a tool.

When I was 14 I had a 2-3mm scar on my forearm. I didn’t like how it looked, so I took some toenail clippers and clipped off the scar tissue. Now I have a 4-5mm scar. I can’t believe I did it, and thinking about it now makes me cringe. But there’s a data point for you.

I’d like to strongly challenge your third point. As others have said, there are many reasons people don’t provide emotional support besides “they’re not your friends.” They might not know how to be supportive, they might be afraid of saying the wrong things and causing more hurt, they might have an avoidant attachment style with a deep fear of having others depend on them. We all have moments when we fail to show up for people we care about, and if we respond by ending those relationships, we’ll be left without any at all.

I’m not saying it’s wrong for OP to end those friendships, and I think making new friends is usually a good move. I am saying that - when both parties are willing - being able to name and repair those hurts is part of having healthy relationships.

If they ask about your weaknesses or growth areas, I’ve said something like this: “I like to ask questions about how my work fits into the bigger picture. Sometimes this can seem like I don’t want to do the work, but I just want to make sure I understand it first.” It’s a strength disguised as a weakness and I think I’ve gotten a good response to it.

That’s where medical and psychological diagnoses are different. Diabetes has biological markers that we can measure, and DSM disorders mostly* rely on matching behavior patterns to predetermined labels. One clinician might call it narcissistic personality disorder, and another might call it a fear-driven obsession with social acceptance. Which one is correct?

A major issue with the “mental health industrial complex” is that it quickly becomes tautological while appearing objective and empirical. What do we call someone who can’t empathize with others and constantly seeks admiration? NPD. What is NPD? It’s when someone can’t empathize with others and constantly seeks admiration.

I could make up a diagnosis of “greeting disorder” for people who feel compelled to smile and make eye contact when they meet someone. Then I could insist that people who meet these criteria “have” this disorder, but how is that useful?

*I say “mostly” because recent editions of the DSM include, for some reason, diagnoses like narcolepsy which can’t be diagnosed by psychological evaluation, but they can be diagnosed by medical testing.

I am a mental health professional, and I can tell you that even among professionals, personality disorder diagnoses are very controversial. What we call a PD virtually always results from significant early trauma. To me it feels cruel and unhelpful to pathologize our brain’s survival response.

Also, mental health professionals don’t have a monopoly on labeling someone’s behavior. I have no problem with people colloquially using the term “narcissist.” It carries a different weight when I use it in my work, but you don’t need a graduate degree to know what problematic behavior looks like.