The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Does anyone have advice on how to get more comfortable with being alone for the foreseeable future?
I broke up with a long term girlfriend a while ago (lovely woman, didn't want kids.) I discovered the dating market had gotten horribly worse during the relationship and I no longer have a chance; I've also roughly aged out of the bracket who can reasonably get married. I am going to spend the next forty years or so single and alone. I have intellectually accepted this but I'm still having extremely strong emotional reactions, and I still feel awful by myself.
I tried to talk to a therapist but of course he
a) rainmade me, with no intention of getting me to the point where I won't need therapy. (The overwhelming majority of therapists have never considered the idea of patients getting better, because most people going to therapists just want to feel special, not get better.)
b) told me that I wasn't going to be alone and didn't need to deal with that long term.
I'm not sure what I should do to establish a way to be calm and happy by myself; I'm frustratingly extroverted and need people to talk to and be close with. Can I train myself out of this?
Even as savage as the dating market can be as you age, it doesn't mean you won't find a good relationship again. It will just take time, and from the state of dating apps I think you're better off pursuing this passively though attending social groups.
This can kill two birds with one stone. You can have people to talk to and hopefully get closer to over time while fulfilling your need for social interaction. I'm an introvert, but still get value out of attending meetups (where I've met girlfriends and friends over the years).
It's common for people to go through something like 3 different therapists before they find one that they click with. Don't presume all therapists will be like that guy. Even if I agree that you're unlikely to be alone longterm, it seems like the way he went about convincing you that that was the case was pretty blase.
As for being happy by yourself, you can hedge your bets. There must be some activity you enjoy doing by yourself. You don't need to do it all the time, but help fulfill the gaps in your free time between social events.
I mean, I've gone through half a dozen as an adult, but it took me a while to work out the common link: none of them want to fix you. Putting aside that they have no financial incentive to do so, they just don't see it as their job. From a now-deleted Twitter account:
Think about the median person who makes "men do X rather than go to therapy" jokes: they think that "going to therapy" is a religious ritual, and it gives them feelings of being a special person with Traumas who is being Treated. They have never considered the idea of getting better, so their therapist hasn't cultivated the idea either.
The overwhelming majority of therapists just want to treat people, not cure them, and there's no good way to filter out the tiny handful that actually have better plans. Since the going rate in my city is $400-600/hr, insurance haha you must be joking, I don't see much value in trying here. (This industry may be well intentioned but I think it's mostly evil.)
That is weird. I've had two therapists who I saw for a few months each, and they both were pretty clear about addressing my problem and getting me out of there. I did screen for serious CBTers though.
The screening for serious CBTers is what got you that. Until I hunted down a by-the-book CBT practitioner, the therapists I've seen have been eclectic talk therapists who followed no particular school and had no particular goals for my treatment -- and for whom, therefore, a well-defined timeline made no sense.
Things like "measurable goals," "progress tracking," "time-limited treatment," and "homework," are pretty foreign to a lot of more eclectic practitioners. I generally feel the field is utterly saturated with quackery and non-serious therapy styles that make no difference in people's lives. I get the sense this is what clients actually want -- someone to act as a soundboard without giving particular challenges. But that's exactly the opposite of what people dealing with mental illness truly need. I think the explosion of mentally well people visiting therapists has had something big to do with it.
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