Go here if you want to talk to someone one-on-one: https://discord.gg/Nwn8b29

>>30488

Happiness is always more important than money, and you have the luxury of being in a position where you wouldn't be poor in either case. If you have even the slightest reason to believe that the grass isn't actually greener, don't do it.

Most people will give you the same old "you'll never get anywhere if you don't take risks!" bullshit, but that only applies if you're not already in a job you like. If you are, I think you should always think very, very carefully about leaving.

Bit like my mate who divorced his wife last year and now wants her back- You'll be very lucky to get a second chance.

>>30491
Thank you anon. I've spent months agonising and your post has helped me to relax somewhat.

I really need to get better at decisions that have both downsides and upsides.

Everybody tells you to always push yourself but at what point does it end?

I know a girl who quit her inner city London law job to become a photographer and wish I was that brave. I asked her why and she said when you're 15 you kind of start making choices about your career and your life and I studied and studied for years and worked for years without ever asking do I still want to do law? She said when she took two weeks off she realised the resounding answer was no and she's delayed quitting because being the successful lawyer had become her identity and that was it.

>>30492

Whatever you choose to do, it's good to remember that very few choices in our life are binary or permanent. There are usually more options than you think and the cost of making a bad choice is rarely as bad as you think. The fear of failure usually has far worse consequences than failure itself.

>>30492

You're welcome ladm9.

I've had my fair share of shit jobs, and thanks to that I developed a different sense of perspective than that which most people seem to have. From where I'm sitting, a job you don't actively loathe is something precious worth holding onto, because you can't say the same for the great majority of jobs.

I'm the type of person who's never been able to stick with anything I don't enjoy, and that's a big reason my life was going absolutely nowhere until my mid 20s. But on the flipside the perspective of the law lass you mention feels completely alien to me. I find it difficult to understand how people get that far in life as though they're just on rails, without ever questioning the fact they're utterly disinterested in what they're doing. I think the common wisdom regarding "pushing yourself" and all that is actively unhealthy for us in a great many cases.

Money is the obvious answer, I know. I suppose it's because I never had money to begin with that I never felt I was missing out on much. I've walked out of jobs at lunch time and been back on the dole by that afternoon, because at the end of the day, if your days will be miserable regardless, what's the point?

But yeah. Don't beat yourself up about what could have been or if you're letting yourself down somehow. Go with your gut.

It sounds like an anxiety attack. Breathe, realise that the feeling will pass and that the situation can be controlled.

From what you have said, go with your gut, chasing money and making yourself miserable isn't worth it, unless you have a goal in mind in which case you can endure the misery for a known and limited time.

You have the benefit of good pay in either case. I love what I do, I'm respected and good at it, but the downside is I get paid £18K, if I could have all the positivity and be on £40K I'd be laughing.

>>30495
>Hinge, which was my favourite, now puts the people it thinks I'm best matched with and puts them in a separate queue in which I'd have to pay a could of quid to message them

You what? My Hinge does nothing of the sort and the algorithm is clearly bollocks so you would never pay for it. If Hinge has changed for you then it's obviously marked you as a soppy bollocks to fleece. Delete for your own good and take your rage out by repetitively lifting heavy objects, getting a hobby and making pulling your spud a bit more special by going the extra mile.

As for the rest, just get Bumble and have the lass open with "hey" or a shit pick-up line rather than you putting initial effort in - sounds like what you need anyway and if she's an accidental swipe you will still get an ego boost.

>>30479
>>30496
>>30497
You're feeling down because February is the shittest month of the year with the winter and general tedium. It's Spring now and we have those bank holidays coming up. It'll get better.

>>30498
Have you tried talking to her?

>>30499
> It's Spring now and we have those bank holidays coming up. It'll get better.

Not to be a contrary cunt but a bunch of spring bank holidays under lockdown or whatever "no pubs and no mates in the park" tier they throw us in just doesn't sound like a whole bundle of laughs.

We'll either get through this or we'll die, but until then it's going to be a whole lot of waiting around. People have been wondering why chess has spiked in popularity recently, but along with cryptic crosswords it's something that everyone doing more than a couple of years gets into while doing time. We're essentially a global population on a Cat-B regime, we'll be all be reading war and peace soon enough.

>>30499
>My Hinge does nothing of the sort
Yes it does, You're just not paying attention. Press the star on the bottom row.

>and the algorithm is clearly bollocks so you would never pay for it.
It's the spirit of it that I'm opposed to.

>take your rage out by repetitively lifting heavy objects
I can't. The gym is closed.

>>30501
It's such a shame that no heavy objects exist anywhere but the gym, except for the ones glued to the ground.

Almost experienced hope, but it was... NO! I DID A TYPO! FUCK OFF BRAIN! I'm still doomed, but I'm not going to try because I misspelt the name of a writer who's been dead for four-hundred years.

I'm sorry if this post reads as contrived, but that was all real time, honest.

OP, you taught the kid a very important lesson: it's every man for himself, nobody is going to help ever. He should be grateful to you for teaching him such a concept. I was abused as a kid, it only stopped when my father had a strange domestic accident including a pot of boiling water. Nobody else helped, and my whore mother only made things worse. That's life. He was shit, the child abuser in LIDL was shit, you were shit for not helping, I am shit for various things that I cannot talk about here. Everything is shit.

>>30457

I can say that I am one of those people that does intervene, I have step in-between people before they get into fights I have restrained and tackled strangers who are about to hit another stranger with an object. I've literally picked up a collapse person like in this experiment >>30453 several times, one time it was on the way to a job interview just outside which leads me to believe it might have been some sort of test of character.

And the reactions people have to that is strange, people treat it like it is bravado when I talk about that I would do it, and at the time people treat it like I have done something really stupid, hostilely so, or they treat it like nothing happened at all and just return to normality instantly.

I'll grant you I can't rationalize, it is a snap decision where 99% of people go one way and I go the other, the needs of the self are outweighed by the situation, is my reaction perfect, no, but the point is I acted, and I think I sleep better with my fuck ups. Even when I accidently kidnapped a sick cat thinking it was a stray and had to have an awkward conversation with the owner the next day.

>>30456

My dad and his mate were coming home from a night out once and saw a bloke pushing his girlfriend about, they challenged him and ended up being set on by both the abuser and the girlfriend. It's a very common scenario in domestic abuse situations, due to a combination of Stockholm Syndrome and the victim perhaps fearing a worse beating from the abuser later on due to failing to come to their aid.

Also, my sister was once sexually harassed on the bus late at night by a gang of chav scumbags; another teenager bravely told them to leave her alone, at which point the gang promptly beat the shit out of him before fleeing the bus. My point being, playing the Good Samaritan, while seeming like the honourable thing to do, almost never turns out well in reality and will more likely than not land you either in a police cell or in hospital depending on the outcome. Even if you somehow magically channel your inner Bruce Lee and deck the bad guy, in this day and age with phone cameras and social media there's every chance that your "assault" on them could be filmed and taken completely out of context and get you fired from your job or worse.

>>30461

>> a combination of Stockholm Syndrome and the victim perhaps fearing a worse beating from the abuser later on due to failing to come to their aid.

That's only partly true. Cunts get turned on by abuse and by seeing their mate bullying and abusing other people. My (whore) mother was completely unable to defend herself or her sons, but she became fierce and corageous everytime she had to defend her abusive husband. She lied to police, teachers and social services to protect the same husband that would beat her up, steal money from her and give her STD's. Years later, my girlfriends confided to me that they were turned on when I abused them. Cunts needs to be fucked, otherwise they will fuck you.

>>30459
>>30462

I would hope to save children from developing exactly this attitude - it's clearly a very distressing one to foster.

>>30445
Get a WFH job once this is over?

>>30446
Why so I can continue this cursed existence indefinitely? Lockdown comes, lockdown goes, my life doesn't change a fucking bit I'm still the same sad loner subhuman freak I was half a decade ago when this started.

>>30447
Exercise
Do some kind of spiritual practice
Create something

What do you like? There must be things you think are good and you can surely maneuver yourself to make your life to revolve around them more.

My life has been on the rocks since 2015 and there are many days when this pandemic feels like the final nail in a coffin, but I have faith that there are better days on the other side of this and I am planning on correcting the things I don't like about my life that I have the power to change.

>>30447

Then the lockdown is irrelevant, and the only thing that could possibly change your situation is you. If it is difficult or painful or not is irrelevant the point is only you could possibly change it.

I kind of know what you mean, OP. I've reverted back to NEEThood and when people ask me how I've spent lockdown "not even being arsed to watch TV shows I'd probably like" isn't much of an answer. I think my rage issues pre-date COVID though so that's on me.

>>30434

Well, when I asked for feedback from my therapist he just sat there, looking at me with his mouth opened and a blank stare. Maybe he suffered from some form of learning disability. He either ignored my questions or answered with canned answers straight from some motivational poster. I think that he did not listen to a single word of what I said. A store mannequin would do exactly the same service. Well, you get what you pay for. Mental health is an expensive luxury, not a right.

I haven't had the time to look this up, but my impression is that there are big distinctions between 'counsellor', 'therapist', 'psychotherapist', 'psychiatrist', and so on, but I've not seen these terms disambiguated in the UK context.

I also have some intuition that the more you pay, the more therapy moves into the "talk about your specific problems and experiences" type, rather than the "here's some broad frameworks to help you sort out your life" type.

Additionally, each therapist will also have their particular approach that they've been trained in. As I understand it, the former folks tend to be deep into the old psychological schools and will apply Freudian or Jungian theory in their work, while the latter will tend toward the current model if CBT as it's the one with the biggest evidence base and is designed to be widely applicable, hence it gets trotted out (with varying degrees of competence) for everyone.

Maybe some lad or one of our resident niche-knowledge posters here on .gs can enlighten us a bit more about this.

>>30439

"Counsellor", "therapist" and "psychotherapist" are not legally regulated terms - anyone can slap it on their business card and have a go. If you're thinking about seeing someone who uses one of these titles, you really need to check out what qualifications they have. At a bare minimum, go with someone who is registered with the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.

https://www.bacp.co.uk/search/Therapists

"Psychiatrist" means a medical doctor who has specialised in mental health; you'd typically see a psychiatrist for diagnosis or medical treatment, but they rarely provide psychotherapy themselves. It can be useful to see a psychiatrist if you think that you might have a complex or serious problem, but expect to pay about £300 for a consultation.

The gold standard of qualification for a therapist is someone using the title "clinical psychologist", "practitioner psychologist" or the post-nominal letters "D.Clin.Psych". They aren't medical doctors, but they are required to have a similar level of postgraduate training and practical experience.

I can do a post on the various schools of psychotherapy, but it's a massive topic. The most important thing is to find someone you get on with - in the jargon, we'd say "the single biggest predictor of the efficacy of psychotherapy is the strength of the therapeutic alliance". Ring around and have a chat with a few different therapists before booking a session. Don't bother if you think they sound like a dickhead. Don't be afraid to drop out after one session if you think you're not going to be able to work effectively with someone. If you want practical solutions, look for someone who specifically specialises in cognitive behavioural therapy, rather than someone who lists it along with fifteen other kinds of therapy you've never heard of. This is purely my personal opinion, but the term "integrative" usually means "vague and wishy-washy".

>>30442

Thanks, until now I only found dickheads, like that guy:

>>30213

I ditched him immediately, of course.

Until now I assumed that I only found useless dickheads because I was going for cheap, but I am getting the unpleasant idea that psychotherapy is generally a crock of bullshit. I will try to check if I can get something better by paying more, but if I think I will find bullshit again. Any idea on the minimum price to get a therapist with a working brain and human IQ? That's the only parameter I can rely on, I do not possess the skills required to check the value of the shrink's qualifications.

By the way, the dumbass that proposed EFT to me is fully BACP qualified. That qualification is worth very little to me.

>>30443

>but I am getting the unpleasant idea that psychotherapy is generally a crock of bullshit.

It's hard to say you're entirely wrong there to be honest lad. It's probably more that it's easy to get away with being a borderline fraudulent con artist masquerading as a professional in this particular field compared to most, though, rather than the whole thing being a lie.

I'm sure you'll find one you get on with eventually, it'll just be a long haul and you might end up paying more than you hoped.

>>30422
Why do you need to do all this?

>>30423
Do all what? The venting is under the assumption that it's on /emo/ so there's a bit of leeway for being like that. I'm uncomfortable with several elements of what happened tonight. I've tried to approach some constructively, and the rest of it is just wondering what other people would have thought was enough.

>>30422
It just sounds like you obsessed over it and cried because of the shock. I do think you have some issues that maybe need discussing given how far you say you would go but it might just be the adrenalin rushing in your head and you wouldn't have actually threatened to kill a petty thief.

I think if anything you need to learn to calm down. Why does any of this bother you? Petty criminals are scum but twats are twats, it's a stranger bike and you screaming like a banshee because you can't control your emotions isn't a good luck or helpful.

>>30425
Apologies lads, it was clearly my bedtime long before I wrote that.

>>30422

>I think this indicates that I have some unaddressed anger issues.

I don't think it's anger issues. You seem very emotionally conflicted about these events, which indicates to me you are placing a lot of importance on them.

It's worth asking why you feel this need to be the hard man in order to feel good. Was your dad mean to you about being a skinny lad as a kid? Did you get beaten up at school and want to prove to yourself you're not a wimp? Do you just have a small willy?

I would suggest you find something else to validate you in terms of masculinity. I've never been in a proper fight myself, and if I was I'd probably get my arse kicked, but I've always told myself the fact I haven't must mean I look like someone who isn't worth messing with. Considering some of the places I've lived, I don't think I'm entirely lying to myself either.

You need to work out what insecurity is causing you to feel like this.

I know what you mean but can offer no solution. Everything I've read just says that this is part of being a Proper Adult™.

Like you've noticed, changing circumstances are important for growth and if you try to hang onto things then everyone else will grow up around you whilst you sit in arrested development in your manky lads flat. The good times of being a young adult, like being a child, just pass. If not when you settle into a career then certainly when you have children and just lack the time or otherwise always have a reason to put off socialising when you don't feel it. I suppose this is what neighbours and work colleagues are good for but modern societies atomisation isn't configured to support that much as I think men need that escape of being in a pack of lads to actualise.

I myself have maybe 2 people I consider to be proper mates at this point on the level you describe but we've moved to other ends of the country so we never get to see each other (especially at the moment). The maddening thing is women seem much less prone to this and can't understand how this happens for lads but like I said I'm not sure how to fix that.

>take the piss out of Star Trek: TNG

How dare you.

>>30416

I'm in a similar position. About a fortnight ago, I had the place to myself so I had a Skype call with a mate as we both watched Evil Dead 2 and got drunk. It was the happiest I had felt in years. Take from that what you will, all I'll say ia that having a 'proper' life isn't all that is cracked up to be.

>shoot the shit and eat junk food in a car

Sounds horrible.

For me this actually only happened when I decided to knock smoking weed on the head. Kind of a double whammy of bitterness there, because not only was it drifting away from my friend group, but the fact I was only part of that group at all because I was another body who would reliably have some weed on them. As the otherlad mentioned above, women don't have this problem, something keeps them in touch; stoners have a similar thing, because they need to keep the circle active or else supply might dry up.

I try not to take it too personally mind. Travelling miles to sit in someone's house is more than I can be arsed with most of the time, so I don't blame them for not being arsed. My most reliable mate when it came to actually hanging out playing videogames etc died a couple of years ago, and most of my old mates don't drink so inviting them out to meet in town is a non-starter.

It's a shit hand to be dealt but I think it is something you just have to come to terms with. You can make new friends as an adult but I don't think you ever realistically get to that level of closeness where you'll have them come round and sleep on the sofa every other week so you can get trashed watching Arnie films together. I suppose you just have to be thankful you had that once, whereas a lot of people will have been lonely spergs who missed that boat and will never had it.

Also, take up Warhammer. It blagged my head a bit, but it truly seems as if nothing gives grown men the excuse to socialise without alcohol like playing with toy soldiers.

>>30417
>How dare you.

I only mock it from a place of genuine affection. I not-so-secretly want to live on the Enterprise-D.

>>30218
>took months before finding a male therapist willing to take my case.
>The other therapist either told me that they were not dealing with cases like mine

What kind of thing are we talking here?
Do you eat your own poop? do you eat other peoples?

>>30220

Much worse than that. Lots of child sexual abuse involved.

>>30221
Have you considered talking to the police about it? I imagine once the burden of secrecy is lifted you could begin processing the guilt, whichever position you're in. Ofcourse that burden would be replaced by another but it might be bearable with the knowledge that you're doing what's right.

https://www.stopitnow.org.uk/ exists, with a free anonymous helpline and valuable resources.

>>30222

Thanks for your kind words, but it happened decades ago, in a shithole country far away from UK. The police won't care (they did not care back then), and all people involved are either dead, in a retirement home with dementia, or have moved on with their lives. People prefer to deal with those issues in private.

>>30213
There 2 sides to that
1 side he wants you to keep paying him so he probably would just say shit for you to think he is helping but really isn't
2 side that sounds like that would actually help. Like did you think anybody though thar waving a clock in front of somebody, but it did.

Harmony from The Queen's Nose is now a therapist.

https://welldoing.org/email/victoria-shalet-person-centred-humanistic-psychotherapist-london-w1u

I too am interested in this as I've heard tales of people having to try multiple therapists which I really don't have the cash for, I want to be as sure as possible before biting the bullet.

If it's any help to you OP, so far I've browsed MyOnlineTherapy due to the good reviews and some of the lists of qualifications therapists have on there are extensive. It is £49 for an initial 30 minute meeting and after that £99 per hour session though so it's not anything I can do long term but that's just me, there's also the benefit of being able to do it just through text if you so wish, so you can then revisit conversations and advice they've given you.

>>30362
>Everyone has intrusive thoughts and there's a reason brains operate that way....

>Shake it off and move on with your life.

I can't speak for OPs situation but I am fairly certain you don't know what you are talking about at all.

>>30362
>Shake it off and move on with your life.

What a stupid thing to say.

>>30364
There's nothing wrong with what I wrote.

>>30366
Do you know what you are talking about then?

This one time, as a child, I took a shit onto a plastic bag while infront of the mirror in my mothers room. I just wanted to see what it looked like coming out, who doesnt? Well I forgot about the shit and my mom found it hours later when she got home from work.

>>30350
After practicing meditation for a while you'll begin to notice that thoughts can go as easily as they arrive - You simply let them go. Sounds wishy washy, but it really does boil down to 'don't think about it'.

Agreed. At the high-functioning end, loads of people self-diagnose as autistic just because they're a bit socially awkward. Not knowing what to say at parties is not a medical condition, we've just been conditioned by the media to believe that everyone is extroverted and quick-witted. You're not autistic, you're just a bit of a berk.

At the low-functioning end, a lot of people who would have previously been diagnosed as learning disabled are being diagnosed as autistic, probably out of some impulse towards false hope. There are autistic geniuses, but there are no learning disabled geniuses; pretending that your kid has autism allows you to overlook the fact that they have an IQ of 55. There might one day be a cure for autism, but there's no cure for being terminally thick.

There was a big wave of badly-raised chav kids with a bit of foetal alcohol syndrome being misdiagnosed with autism, but now they're usually misdiagnosed with ADHD, ODD or PDD-NOS.

High-functioning autistic people are a special bunch who can often learn to live with their condition and have successful lives and careers, if they're raised in the right way.

What seems to happen very often now is that instead of being pushed into situations that are difficult and stressful for them, giving them the chance to learn how to cope and thrive, many more kids are being wrapped in cotton wool and so denied the chance to learn.

I'm definitely at least a borderline case myself, I was never diagnosed but very much mothered too much which allowed me to get by for too long without developing better social skills and self reliance, but at 18 I left home and made my own way and that set me back on the right course.

The problem is that if you tell people nowadays that kids with autism just need to be kicked out into the world, you get people screaming "ableist" at you, but that's completely missing the point. High functioning autists aren't disabled they just think differently and arguably better in many ways, but they need to learn how to interact with a world full of normals to reach their potential and you can't book learn those skills.

>>30347

I get what you're saying, but think you might also be succumbing to survivor bias, here. I don't have any data, but I imagine there are likely examples of people "on the spectrum" being pushed out into the world as you describe and failing to become resilient, perhaps experiencing trauma, getting their psychological makeup categorised in some other way, and falling through other social safety nets as a result.

>>30347

>if you tell people nowadays that kids with autism just need to be kicked out into the world, you get people screaming "ableist" at you

Not to be a cunt but your post reads like the sort of detached and casually ignorant Mail-esque shite my parents are always coming out with, and I always have to ask them "How the fuck do you two know, you've not been anywhere or spoken to anyone beyond this street and the local for the past ten years."

I'm reasonably certain that a lot of the apparent prevalence of autism and such in kids has more to do with cynical parents attempting to abdicate responsibility for their kid being a little shit at school, than it does to do with kids these days being wrapped in cotton wool.

>>30178

Sorry to burst your bubble, but sanding your cock down to a nub doesn't warrant sectioning these days because it's not immediately life-threatening. Even before the pandemic, psychiatric inpatient units were working on a one-in, one-out basis and most units were routinely having to discharge actively suicidal patients to make room for even more suicidal patients.

>>30181
Another casualty of covid. RIP OP's knob.

We could always delete it and ban him if he comes back, but then we wouldn't be able to call him an arsehole in longform.

I still can't coom properly. It just sprays or dribbles out instead of getting a full pumping action. Strange. It'll probably never be right again.

Can we ban him yet?

>>30342
Heaven preserve. This isn't your blog. Unless you need help or advice with something, I'm going to lock this.

>I feel I've alienated myself from an online community

It'll blow over. I've felt like that before and it's the recency of it that stings. Give it a little while and see how you feel upon reflection.

Next time try not to have such a teary about getting banned for posting pictures of Greta on /x/.

Without meaning to sound like I'm marking your homework, there's lots of different threads here, and I think you might be equivocating a bit between ideas that aren't strictly related.

Are you really aiming to replicate the "confidence trickster" behaviour? It sounds like you're aware of the value of honesty in and of itself. You're imagining a wife or partner, but that relationship will be hollow unless you allow them to see your flaws.

It sounds like you're struggling a lot with the problem of "being seen" and your self-image. This isn't an easy thing to figure out for anyone, but I find the more you can turn to your own objective merits and achievements, and be up-front about your limitations, the more people will respect you for who you are.

I'm sure you have qualities as an individual that others value, and your recognition that you might have misbehaved in the past is a good sign that you don't want to harm others. In short, don't give up on yourself as a person and do your very best not to make yourself a better person in your own eyes.

>>30337

Do your very best to make yourself a better person in your own eyes.

I accidentally negated the last bit and can't delete my post. What a silly sausage.