A Perspective on Female Loneliness

I'm an attractive woman therefore everything for me is supposed to be easy and this is what's so devastating about it is when things are supposed to be easy for you how does that make you feel when they're hard a perspective on female loneliness oh I guess you guys can't see this corner but that's okay I wasn't sure if I should post my experience since it's deeply personal but I've seen similar posts by other women here and decided to just go for it I'm a 29 year old woman who is above average looking I've been hit on a lot in life and get uncomfortable amounts of attention I never asked for however I've suffered from social anxiety since I've been a child because of trauma abuse and bullying I was painfully shy until my mid-20s and would hardly speak to anyone I have no contact with my family because they abused me I never had a Social Circle I've never been in a long-term relationship I only have two quote friends who also suffer from mental illness they don't know the extent of my issues though and they both live very far away I spend every day isolated from the rest of the world in my room and hardly get sleep at night because of my insomnia out there I study and nobody could ever guess I'm living this way my social anxiety has gotten better to the point that I can fake it but I am entirely inaccessible as a person when people talk to me I listen and reply but I never talk about my own life sometimes I lie when I have to people often say women can't be lonely yet I've never been in love and simply can't form deep connections with others the only relationship I last I had lasted about six months and the guy had zero interest in knowing me as a person when I ended things he openly admitted that he only dated me for my looks I struggled to act normal and tried to tried being in a relationship like everyone else for six painful months and he had no idea who I even was I have accepted that I can never be in love despite my painful craving to love someone and truly be loved my sex drive is high but I never act on it because I despise the idea of casual sex some would say but you could have sex anytime you want to yes I could but it wouldn't mean anything it wouldn't fix my loneliness it would just make it worse to know that my looks are my only value I already zoned out of the real world mentally outside of studying I only live in my Daydreams and stories I write my room is filled with merchandise of fictional characters I talk to them act like they would be the support of friends I never had I've been quote unquote in love with a fictional character for almost 15 years that's the closest feeling I ever felt to loving someone he's pretty much the reason I'm not killing myself I even lack the ability to connect with people online I'm not part of any Community or group I don't have social media or play online games it's almost like I don't even exist I'm not posting this to get advice or pity I just wanted to share my story somewhere for once I've long accepted that this will be my life forever what I'm trying to say is being an attractive woman doesn't magically turn life into easy mode women are people too and you never know what they are hiding just by looking at them finding casual sex or even a random relationship with no depth would be easy for me but it's not worth [ __ ] when you want nothing more than a genuine human connection update I didn't expect to receive so many comments support or DMS over this post I and I never thought so many people could actually relate to it thank you for that I can't reply to everything now because I it's a bit overwhelming but I'm reading everything so first thing that I want to say is this person says I've never been part of a community and I just want to say and I hope that I think they've already figured this out so I'm late to the party here if you've never been part of a community you're welcome here um that's the first thing now I was tempted to say well you're a part of this one well that's your choice it's not for me to say that you are a part of this community or you aren't a part of this community what I can say is that you're welcome here I don't know if that kind of makes sense but it's arrogant for me to assume that this person feels like this is their Community right if this person doesn't feel like this is their Community like that's on that's them you know they're entitled to that so what I will say is that you're welcome here and if you'd like to join I think it's fair to say we'd love to have you that's what we're going to start with but I think this post is really really important because it tackles or addresses a lot of what we sometimes lose sight of so a lot of people out there think that being pretty means translates into equates having friends having lovers having boyfriends girlfriends whatever they think that being physically attractive is a miracle drug is a Panacea for fixing all of the problems in life and the truth of the matter is that it isn't and this is what's sometimes so hard for other people to understand because if we live in a society where being pretty means that your life is easy what do you say if you are pretty and your life isn't easy right how do you get people to understand because everyone kind of looks at you and says like you're pretty like what are you complaining about you could get laid anytime you want to of course you could have a relationship and there may be people out there that that would say I would love to date you right I I want to see you as a person you know like I I don't I don't get it everyone out there is craving something that if you're attractive or you're a woman or whatever right if you've got some kind of Advantage everyone out there is craving something and you're craving it too the challenge is that paradoxically the advantage that everyone thinks will make your life easy can sometimes actually make your life difficult and that's something that it's very hard to explain to people who are not in a frame of mind to listen to what your challenge challenges are because you have something that they don't have right I don't know if that sentence was too complex so I'll try to say it again but like sometimes so let's try to understand a little bit right so I'm going to generalize here which is the first mistake but like what it's like to be like an attractive human being especially a woman isn't Just About Women by the way so when you do enter into a relationship sometimes what people will do if you're attractive is they'll just see the the physical attractiveness right that's what they're interested in and this person is even having an experience where someone dated them for six months because of the way that they looked and so it's kind of weird and we may sort of say that okay physical attractiveness makes it easy for you to get into relationships and that may be true but my point is that that's not sufficient to deal with the crushing loneliness that you feel and in fact sometimes it can even reinforce it because why is this person in a relationship it's not because of me it's because of the way that I look right I'm one accident away of having no value because if I get into a car accident or if I trip and fall and I get a scar on my face or I break my nose or something like that then I have no value at all so the really challenging thing sometimes about people who are attractive is that their value starts to become based on their attraction because society as a whole thinks okay this has so many advantages like this is your worth and that's actually like their experience and so I want you all to think about this a little bit because if you're an attractive woman and you get a job what do people attribute your success to are you being hired to if you get promoted what do they attribute your success to now this is kind of tricky right because most people will actually attribute it to your value as a person to your work ethic let's be fair the challenge is that some people don't right some people will say like oh she just got the job because she's hot or she got promoted because she's sleeping with the boss and they kind of make these kind of comments and they make these kind of jokes we're not saying that the majority of people are like this so then why do we even bring it up the majority of people aren't like this like why does it matter right like if like 98 to 95 of people don't say things like this what difference does it make why are we focusing on the two percent so let me ask y'all a question how many people does it take to ruin your day how many people does it take to ruin your life how many people does it take to turn an achievement into Ash this is why we talk about it and this is what's so hard about being in a situation like this if you're lonely and you're attractive and we're going to get to we're going to talk more about that right and you have one relationship where the person even says like they don't treat you like a person right like they're like really interested in your looks and you kind of like you try to make it work right because you're like okay I'm lonely what's the antidote like I need to be in a relationship okay that's like fine someone get this person's nice they're being really nice to me they're getting me flowers we're going on dates and whatnot where you know dating for six months but like the more you're in that relationship you start to feel like there's not a connection here and then you break up with them because you you torture yourself for months in this relationship trying to find a connection with another human being and then when when you end up when you end the relationship because you're not getting a connection they're even like yeah by the way I wasn't really interested in you as a person and that hurts that sinks in deep it confirms everything that you fear so the challenge here is that sometimes we have advantages and there there's data for example that shows that attractive people get particular advantages in life we're not disputing that the key thing is that somewhere along the way we started to take the advantages that let's say Attractive people face women sorry the advantages that attractive people receive that women receive that tall men receive you know you can take whatever you want like you can take whatever Advantage there are all kinds of advantages having hair right that's an advantage people treat you differently and somewhere along the way we started gatekeeping suffering if someone has an advantage and we started to invalidate people's experiences around this we started to say that by the way if you're attractive you're not allowed to be lonely you're not allowed to be socially anxious because everyone would want to be friends with an attractive person right because there's actually data that shows that that maybe I mean actually I don't know that I've looked at that but I'm sure that there's papers out there that show that attractive people are have more friendships the non-attractive people right it's not a surprising finding but here's the thing to understand is that each and every one of us is an individual human being and that no one feature of us determines who we are as a person and in fact the reason that this makes us so lonely is because sometimes if we're attractive it's like that one feature is the only thing that other people see and that's not just about attractiveness right this is something that's generalizable as well where you may be someone whose entire life or what everyone looks at when they see you is determined by one feature I'm the oldest son of a business mogul therefore the weight of the world's expectations are on my shoulders I'm an attractive woman therefore everything for me is supposed to be easy and this is what's so devastating about it is when things are supposed to be easy for you how does that make you feel when they're hard because everyone's telling you hey life is supposed to be easy you got you got the golden ticket you're playing life on easy mode it's devastating because failing at life is one thing but failing at life finding easy mode destroys Who You Are destroys your capacity for self-love so what do we do about this the first thing to understand is that sometimes people who are in this cycle and it sounds like this person in a sense is not in this cycle but I still want to kind of talk about it sometimes when we have one feature which we think should fix loneliness okay or the world tells us invalidates us if we say we're lonely we can use that feature as a crutch to connect with other people so if you're an attractive woman and you feel lonely sometimes what you'll fall into is casual sexual relationships and you're looking for more but sometimes that feeling of loneliness is so heavy and so crippling that you'll use anything you can to make it go away for a little while right because the truth of the matter is that that feeling of loneliness has a neurochemical component so after after having sex with someone and after like laying with them like you'll get this release of oxytocin and this is once again an oversimplification but oh oxytocin is one of the hormones that we use to bond so it's responsible for like maternal uh infant bonding it's also responsible for like bonding in romantic relationships it's part of the reason why Friends with Benefits can sometimes be hard or specifically cuddling after engaging in sexual relations with a friend friend with benefits will start to create Catching Feelings it's part of the reason that we catch feelings and so if you're if you're lonely and you're craving human connection it turns out that sex can give you a piece of that is an interesting aside some people have even found research or some people have done research on why people with schizophrenia have difficulty forming emotional connections with other people and they've one of the theories they've traced it back to is actually oxytocin deficiencies and so some people were pretty pioneering and they thought okay what if we artificially give people uh oxytocin nasal spray because that's the delivery thing that they did so they did clinical trials on oxytocin nasal spray for people with schizophrenia to see if they could help them form like relationships and emotional bonds turns out that the data wasn't really good and it didn't seem to be very effective it was really interesting kind of side note so sometimes we'll when we're really lonely we'll use anything that we can to get our needs met right you want to Crave some kind of you're craving that connection so much you'll even engage in sex and it sounds like this person has sort of tried this the Casual Sex route and it sort of didn't work for them which I think is like a step in the right direction so be a little bit careful about what you use to get your needs met because if you do use sex to connect with another person because it does sort of like engage oxytocin for them it engages oxytocin for you there's some amount of balding I mean bonding Freudian slip of the year there's some amount of bonding but that bonding too is somewhat artificial that connection that you're forming with them is based on them not knowing who you are and then something really devastating can happen because over time you can start to learn that the only way for me to get this is through sex because in your life you're lonely you're lonely you're lonely until you have sex with someone and then for a few moments you're connected and then over time if that's the only way you can connect to people what does that do to your sense of identity it cripples it because now the only thing that I'm worth the only worth that I bring as a person is through my body that's the only way I can connect with people and so interestingly enough what we tend to see and this is this is not just about attractive women who are lonely but this is also about people who engage in unhealthy sexual relationships and use sex as a coping mechanism and things like that we sort of create this vicious cycle where I'm getting my needs met through some kind of unhealthy relationship and the unhealthy relationship actually reinforces the negative parts of myself that make it hard for me to connect because if I'm not worth any more than my body then why would anyone ever want to connect with me I can't risk showing people what I really am because what I am is ugly but what I look like is attractive and so you're terrified to actually engage with people even though you crave it so the first thing to do is if you're in that cycle understand that cycle now the second thing that I want to comment on is I imagine that there are some people who are listening to this who may be reacting strongly to it so here are a couple of the reactions that I'm envisioning okay some people may say I'm lonely and unattractive but I'd take sex plus loneliness over lonely loneliness plus no sex any day of the week right even having sex is like one step up and there are some people out there who are who are craving a sexual relationship and the thought of I can get laid anytime that I want to sounds like the Holy Grail to them they're like what is this person complaining about this sounds amazing there may be other people who are sort of reacting to this as well which is like you you know sort of like once again what is this person complaining about there's so many advantages to being an attractive woman in the world I don't get it if you're listening to this and you're reacting that way I want you to notice what you are doing to the other person with your reaction this person is telling you that they're suffering they have something that granted you don't have and there may be advantages to that and you can want that thing but you're just assuming that their experience is incorrect and you're actually depriving them of the capacity to suffer and connect with other people because what you're doing is judging them right you're not you're just sort of like you're not like actually like acknowledging who they are as a person and and treating them with compassion you're actually saying like why are you complaining now here's the key thing to understand if you're having that reaction which is okay when you try to demonstrate your suffering and your humanness to other people how did they react to you when you said I'm lonely when you said it's impossible for me to find a date when you said I'm never gonna get laid what did the world say to you LOL what just work on yourself just untake the black pill it's all in your head you can fix it the world did to you exactly what you're doing to this person and when the world does that when the world invalidates us sometimes what we do is we lean into a community that says yes yes yes your suffering is Justified your suffering is real right and then we separate you know I'm not saying that there aren't some people who have some advantages in life but my overwhelming experience has been that advantages or advantages make no mistake so I still remember for example being a medical student and having female colleagues and walking into a patient's room and the patient assumes that I'm a doctor when I'm just a medical student and they assume that year actually they assume that Mike later on when I'm actually a doctor and I have resident colleagues assuming that the their doctor is actually a nurse so I got treated like a doctor when I wasn't one because I'm a man an Indian and I had female colleagues who got treated as nurses when they were doctors so we're not saying that these things don't exist my point is that those things don't automatically translate to happiness and I've seen this as a psychiatrist working with people who are struggling because they're homeless and working with people who are struggling because they're Partners at investment Banks into something that by the way it's not just me right there's also Buddha who sort of said this and there's some research to that sort of contradicts it which we have to acknowledge right so we know that for example a certain amount of Financial Security does correlate with happiness so we're not saying that there isn't an influence but what I want you to really focus on is how you treat this person because this is really important when someone posts and we talk about it we talk about what they should do differently we give them all of the responsibility right oh I'm stuck what should I do how can I connect with people and we're going to talk a little bit more about what this person can do but this is something that's really important to understand if someone is struggling out there it's not necessarily entirely their fault all of us are products of our environment we're products of the judgments that people face that people give us their lives are also determined by the judgments we make and so if you're listening to this post and it's making you feel resentful because I don't understand why this person is complaining I have it so much harder I'm not saying you don't have it harder what I'm saying is that comparing who has it harder doesn't actually help I did three months of work on a trauma unit and then also was on call and stuff for years on the same trauma unit got called a lot and one of the things that we found is that people would instinctively compare their trauma oh you were emotionally abused I was physically abused you were physically abused I was sexually abused and it doesn't help right why do people do that it's because they themselves when you shared your story of suffering people invalidated you they said you don't deserve to suffer like what are you complaining about you're a male incel there's male privilege right and then the insults are saying oh there's like women privilege they can get laid whenever they want to like my point is like it's not about the statistics it's about how we treat each other as human beings when someone else says they suffer how do you respond to that when you shared your suffering how did someone else respond to you and that's what I really commend about this person because this person is saying this is my experience and what I'm really proud of is that this is a community where we have heard this person and we've said we hear you it sounds tough and by the way this is me I didn't know that attractive women could feel this way right which is awesome that's where AOE healing comes from so I said at the beginning I'll say it again you're welcome here now last thing to talk about so one thing is we talked about the cycle right next thing to talk about is what do you do if you're kind of in this situation so generally speaking when I when I encounter situations like this we do see this cycle of being judged because of the way that you look your identity starts to form kind of like it almost gets split off whether this is like the real me and this is the way that the world treats me and the more that I get judged by about the way that I look the more isolated I feel and the less good of a person I kind of become in my own head I don't know if that sort of makes sense but so for example like let's say I get promoted and people make comments and how many comments does it take to ruin your day right so like if you get if you have a birthday party and 10 people bring gifts and one of them is a pile of feces that's going to ruin your day even if the other nine gifts were really great if 10 people there if nine people are like hey you're a really awesome person we really love having you in our life and one person is like here's a pile of feces you're a waste of space I hope you cease to exist right it doesn't like that that's the the fundamental problem with the world which is that it's so much easier to hurt than it is to help and so the challenge here is that as we develop and as we start getting treated a particular way because of our identity we start to realize oh like like here's my worth as a human being here's all the successes and failures I have but if I'm pretty and more people attribute it to my attractiveness then my actual sense of self kind of like Falls and goes in the other direction does that kind of make sense because the more that people start to talk about my achievements being due to my attractiveness or due to my wealth or due to my advantages the more I start to feel bad about myself and the more I start to be feel bad about myself the more that I compensate in different kinds of ways like I develop a strong ego or narcissistic defense mechanisms and you all can even see that like in the mass media with public figures right there are some people out there who when they accomplish things no one says hey good job that's actually pretty impressive what everyone says is oh you just got there because you were born with advantages and then we'll also potentially even see the egotistical responses and then it just becomes a cycle right because the thought of compassion towards that person is mind-blowing like what so what do you do if you're kind of in this situation where you've been taught or you've learned this lesson that your worth is based on your attractiveness so I I know it's going to sound kind of hard but what you should do is find out who you are so who you are is not determined by how you're treated that's why we call one how you're treated right how people relate to you it's a treatment it's not who you are the problem is that we tend to conflate the two and for people who are more egotistical whose aham goddess are stronger what we tend to find is that who they are is how they are treated so and you know in Psychiatry this is like when we look at narcissism so people treat me with respect I feel like I'm on top of the world but if people treat me with disrespect I'm a horrible human being and so how do I protect myself in that situation I have to force people to treat me with respect because I can't tolerate when they don't because if they don't treat me with respect then my sense of identity is determined by how I'm treated and you'll see this which is why like people always have to be the center of attention they can't tolerate criticism etc etc so you have to find out who you are how do you do that so I recognize that you're lonely I think there are a couple of different ways to find out who you are and we're going to kind of speed run this right this is like the topic of potentially a whole guide but a couple things the first is to spend time with yourself and you may say but I'm lonely I do that all day there's a subtle difference there's a difference between being at home and wanting to be with someone else and spending time with yourself so like you know before stream today I went for a walk and I went for a walk with myself and I just spent time letting my thoughts happen thinking through stuff I recognize that I need some time with myself we need to like work through a couple things figure out what to do figure out what we're going to do today how we're going to handle an extra stream this week Etc et cetera sometimes I love this I'll go eat on my own at a restaurant when I get a chance to and people may look at you and think like oh my God like this person is so pathetic they're eating alone it's like they can think that if they want to I just really want to enjoy my food my way I don't have to want to have to you know sometimes like usually I go out to eat with my kids for example right but like going out to eat with your kids is like I don't really have time to enjoy my food because I have to worry about feeding them ordering for them they're flopping around they want to watch a screen things like it's like it's chaos I'm wolfing down my food in between like you know trying to feed them bites and make sure they're not like the elbow isn't going to hit if you guys have young kids you'll know this the elbow isn't going to knock their cup of water over so spend time with yourself go for a hike I think nature is fantastic that way so if we really look at it like if ego ties to how other people perceive us one way that we can get away from that whole complex is nature because nature doesn't care like if you go for a hike and you go alone versus go with someone else like let me give you a couple scenarios let's say that I'm going for a four hour hike two hours in I start to feel tired and I'm like maybe I should turn back and then if you're with someone you choose not to turn back why don't you turn back because you don't want to be perceived as weak and so even if you accomplish your goal do you feel pride in it no I hiked for the avoidance of weakness it's actually enhances the ego and makes you more insecure if you go by yourself you're on the first two hours of the hike and I recognize it's a four hour hike and we said turn around so it's four hours either way but whatever it's it's a four hour Trail eight hour hike back and forth you can turn back anytime you want to No One's Gonna judge you but you if you achieved it you achieved it if you didn't achieve it you didn't achieve it No One's Gonna clap No One's Gonna say you're weak no one's going to give you any reaction except for yourself you're not going to post about it on Instagram maybe you will but you shouldn't it's really important for you to test yourself if you want to find out who you are you have to test yourself and whether you succeed or you fail you're the only one that knows and so if you decide to push through and you say you know what I'm not going to give up I'm going to keep going no matter what and you get to the top of the mountain no one's there you don't even feel elated you feel like thank God it's over now I have to go back down no one's clapping for you no one's saying oh you're such an amazing human being look try for the human Spirit like you walked for four hours at a mild incline like great job that's what you're going to be telling yourself this is no achievement because that's the toxic part of you that's the part of you that's created when you can't connect with another human being and you do that enough times and you'll start to realize you know what that actually isn't true I did do it and I can be proud of this I gotta start somewhere even if I can't be proud of it if you can't be proud of it no big deal you did it you put your mind to it and you did it so find out who you are and that happens first and foremost with yourself second thing fourth thing I don't know lost track of numbering is I think that you've you know reach out to someone else in an authentic way which is kind of what this person did right so no one is going to appreciate you for who you are unless you actually show them and this is where things get really tricky because if you really show them who you are you open the door to rejection and especially if you're like like in this case an attractive woman who's lonely that's gonna like it's so devastating right because if I pretend to be okay then I'm attractive everyone thinks my life is great but then if I turn to them and I say hey by the way I'm actually really struggling really lonely and I have difficulty connecting with other human beings what what's so terrifying about that is if they turn to you and say what on Earth are you talking about you're so attractive you shouldn't have problems so in that moment you're opening the door for them to reject you the challenge of being connected with another human being is in order to be accepted by someone the door must be open for them to reject you as well and we're so afraid of that rejection that we can never risk it and therefore we can never give someone the chance to accept us and so we stay stuck I think the good news is that a lot of that is in our head right I'm not saying that mean people don't exist out there right so this person had an experience with a boyfriend who was basically very shallow but people in our community exist too where this person shared this and there were people who were there willing to listen and and be compassionate and stuff like that and like I've said it a thousand times I'm gonna say it a thousand more times healthy gamer is more than Dr k who helped this person connect with other human beings it wasn't Dr K the work has been done it's y'all right this person is overwhelmed by the responses and support and they don't have time to reply to all of the people who are responding that's y'all that ain't me so be a little bit careful about who you open up to by all means but you've got to give people a chance to reject you if you want to be accepted so a couple of things just to kind of recap to someone posted about being an attractive woman who's lonely and for a slice of humanity a slice of the internet that does not compute because being attractive is the antidote to loneliness right if you're attractive especially a woman then you should be able to make friends very easily you can get laid anytime you want to oh my God sounds so amazing the truth of the matter is that any advantage is never a substitute for like happiness and will protect you 100 from suffering do advantages give us advantages yeah do they help out some absolutely or some of them pretty big absolutely and yet they're not a substitute for connection right attractiveness is not a substitute for connection and in fact sometimes this is what people who really struggle is that sometimes Attractive people are more lonely when I say more I'm creating a comparison so let's step away from that statement actually are incredibly lonely let's use that so why are they incredibly lonely because anytime someone interacts with them they're not interacting with a person they're interacting with the shell of a person they're not interacting with you they're interacting with your appearance and the more that people interact with your appearance and all they see is the appearance instead of the person The More Lonely the person becomes the real challenge here is that if you share that with people they're gonna be upset because there are people out there who are hurt and lonely themselves and don't have that advantage instead of going to turn to you and say how dare you complain because I'm in the same situation except I'm not even attractive and in that moment they invalidate your experience why do they do that because that was that is what was done to them because when they reached out for help when they said I'm struggling I can't even have sex I've never had sex and I'm gonna die a virgin and men can say this women can say this non-binary people can say this maybe asexual people say this I don't really know right because sometimes they're not interested in it which is totally fine anyone can say this but when you said when people said this remember once again the majority of people may said wow that must be hard for you but all it takes is a couple of people to say wow it's all in your head if you were just did this you could engage in a sexual relationship so it can actually be really invalid it can be hard right because now you've tried to open the door you've tried to connect with another person what has someone else done slammed it in your face so what do you do about this the first is be a little bit careful about what the dirty tricks you'll use to satisfy your loneliness I don't just mean sexual I mean generalizing it for a reason right so there are certain things that we'll do to get people to help us feel less lonely but in an inauthentic way sneaky way sometimes we'll offer sex sometimes we'll offer money right oh I'll pay for all my friends I'll pay so they come right I'm gonna have a birthday party and I'm gonna pay for all the food I'm gonna take everyone out to dinner that way people will show up we'll use some of our advantages to make us feel less lonely but in those moments what we're actually doing is reinforcing our loneliness because it's not an authentic connection we're buying it paying a particular price so you've got to be super careful about that cycle especially because sometimes as you become lonely there's only one thing that works right which is at times you know for women or men like offering your physical form offering your body or offering money and then that's the only way that we know to find connection but the more that we connect with people that way it like reinforces the problem because they're not connecting with me they're not showing up at my birthday party because they like me they're showing up at my birthday party for the free food but that's the only way that I can get them to come and I don't want to be alone on my birthday because that hurts too much so be aware of that cycle and the next thing is get in touch with yourself find out who you are saying that you have trouble connecting with other people sometimes the hardest reason to connect with other people is because we're not sure who we are we don't know what there is to connect to we don't know am I good on the inside or am I bad on the inside am I someone who's worth being friends with with one day and if you don't have that confidence in yourself it's so hard to connect with people because there's a lot of uncertainty what if I'm not actually worth connecting with so how do you find that you spend time with yourself you start to realize and this is what it looks like after you know healthy work that I am who I am not everyone is going to like it and that's okay my value as a human being is not determined by getting this particular person to like me and this particular person to hang out to me with me but oftentimes When we struggle with our own identity that's what it turns into and suddenly this person's opinion means the world to us and if this person agrees to go on a date with me it means I'm a good human being and if this person doesn't agree to go on a date with me it means I'm a bad human being the next thing that you've got to do to connect is open the door for rejection because in order for someone to truly accept you which is what connectedness feels like right to really connect with someone is to have someone see you and say hey I recognize your flawed hey I recognize you're a complex human being and I like you anyway because when you're attractive I like you despite who you are I appreciate the attractiveness outweighs the bad stuff and if we really want to connect with people that needs to change you can't have people accepting you because you're attractive despite the bad stuff you need actually people to accept you kind of no matter what right you want people to accept you in spite of your flaws and not for any other particular reason for for them to say it's okay that you have your flaws that your flaws are over here your advantages over here it's not because one outweighs the other it's because both of them are you and I accept you whole package it's not about a balancing or like hitting a certain threshold the last thing to consider in terms of being seen is you can absolutely work with a therapist especially if you've got problems with like social anxiety or things like that if so I'd recommend a clinical evaluation if you haven't gotten one to see if really therapy is appropriate for you and if it isn't appropriate for you or I mean it can still be appropriate even if you're not clinically ill and you find a good therapist that can be very very helpful but part of what we tend to see actually in coaching and coaching is that women who are in this situation do really really well in coaching people have trouble connecting and we have kind of data behind that so not published or anything like that but we do a lot of internal data to try to figure out okay who can we actually help and it turns out that we have good outcomes around women who struggle with discovering who they are and facing judgment from the world even in career coaching we sort of see that a fair amount where like women are struggling to figure out like okay how do I represent myself well in the workplace how do I deal with toxicity in the workplace things like that it's a great question blenhees is asking when people come to us and share experiences like that on the Internet or IRL how do we know when it's just venting and when they need actual advice it's a great question and my answer is going to be a little bit tongue-in-cheek so oftentimes they will tell you I'm not posting this for advice or pity and if they don't tell you you can ask right I know it sounds like a simple answer but like that's honestly like I mean even when people come into my office I'll just ask like you know ask them you're sharing all this stuff with me what are you you know does it feel good to get it off of your chest and is that really what you're looking for or you know do you want to like do a little bit more back and forth are you looking for guidance are you looking for support that's usually those are the two words that I'll use because venting and advice seem have certain connotations to them so you can just ask them yeah triple stand is saying are you looking for feedback or do you just want to vent oftentimes I find that it's a safe bet to assume it's just venting and if they want advice they will ask for it so I tend to default to support as opposed to guidance a question what if there are conditions or boundaries that impact the connection for example someone says they aren't ready for love but they want to be treated as as though they are loved so Abby Des uh is that's a great question so that's where the tricky thing there is that there's usually like I'm I'm assuming that there's another person in that relationship right so I want to be treated as as though they're loved but aren't ready for love that can put the other person in a very very awkward situation because you're asking them to like you know that's confusing how do you treat someone with love who's Not Ready For Love or like what does that mean to them so I think the first thing to understand is that just because someone wants something if they're not ready for it doesn't probably means that they need to do some work right because they have it that sounds to me like that needs to be explored more or resolved in some way and if you're trying to have a relationship with that person I'm not even saying romantic I can be platonic it can be parental whatever that can be really confusing for you so I would clarify what that means right so treat it as though they are loved like what does that mean and you know what does it mean to not be ready for love like help me understand like what that means and if you're the person who feels that way where you feel like I want to be treated with love but I'm not ready for love you need to ask yourself what does that mean what makes it so that you aren't ready for love what makes it so that you want to be treated with love like what is that what is that if you get treated that way what is that satisfying what hunger does that fill so I think it's a great starting point but requires further exploration

Channel: HealthyGamerGG

Views: 310,812

Keywords: mental health, drk, dr kanojia, healthygamergg, healthy gamer gg, twitch, psychiatrist

Id: UbGZaGzWdfs

Length: 50min 23sec (3023 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 09 2022

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[u/DirtyPipeExploit]

SAME. GIRL. SAME. Thank you SO MUCH for sharing this. THANK YOU.

I self isolated for years to avoid male attention. The day I went out, I got got. Preyed upon. It worked because I was SO LONELY.
Just a week before, an acquaintance (not friend because, of course I don't get close to anyone) looked at me shocked and said "... you're LONELY."
I'm an extrovert, I was surrounded by happy people chatting with me, and I leaned in and whispered to her, "You're right. I am." So called out.

I have so many stories, but really it boiled down to having had a superficially minded, invalidating Mom who didn't see me as a person. Just focused on looks, having that trophy daughter... "praise" of my accomplishments or looks instead of validation of my identity. (There's so much more but I think you get it.) Also, I'm an only child: I really feel you when you say you talk to your character friends.

Now, I'm doing a LOT of IDENTITY development.

Yesterday's video really helped.

Also, we're (maybe you, me, all of us) in a circumstance where we may have made "multiple avatars", and have NO sense of our underdeveloped "Self."

People say "work in your Self esteem"
"love YourSelf"
HAHA jokes on them! I have no Self! (Maybe that's not how you feel, but just my experience).

So, I started with just a list of what I feel was always MINE. Little things about my identity that came from me. I work on a Ladder of Trust with people, good boundaries, but we have to feel our Self first, and it's HARD because it's BURIED DEEP. We weren't allowed to have a Self. People pleasing and all...

Anyway, I'm rambling... Lmk if you want to know where I'm at now. It's working. Love you - I have so much hope for us. (Edits to add some context/fix typos)

[u/Ant_Pit]

I wasn't sure if I wanted to watch this one, bc like, I feel the resentment, too, for pretty people and have the thought in my head that they should shut up bc I have it worse.

But, I'm glad I watched it. I was reminded that trauma actually isn't a competition and if I'm feeling resentment about other people getting validation for their feelings, it's because I'm not feeling validated for my own feelings. And instead of seeing that their validation can also be my validation, I am jealous and angry. So it makes sense why some men chafe at the suggestion that a woman could also feel lonely and rejected, when they're feeling like they're not getting validation about their own loneliness and rejection. Feeling invalidated makes the feeling louder and more insistent.

The reminder to validate myself and extend empathy instead of jealousy towards people asking for reassurance and community was really nice. :)

[u/itzReborn]

Didn’t watch the whole video but I feel like both sides(men and women) won’t fully understand each other despite similar issues because they both go through it differently.

Like an attractive women can be lonely many people(men) will point out the positives of simply being attractive( pretty privilege, more attention even if it’s unwarranted etc) while on the flips side a man loneliness from a womens perspective can be seen as if someone actually likes you they like you for you and your values and not your looks

[u/megaderp2]

I'm lonely, but I'm more bothered by the fact that I'm feeling lonely than the actual lonely, I'd like to be so fine by myself that I wouldn't care if I'm completely alone.

[u/Avolin]

I started laughing because I have literally been doing 4-6 Mike hikes on my weekends lately. It does do something to your relationship with yourself to accomplish things and discover things nobody else is around for. It was weird to hear someone else articulate why it's enjoyable to do on one's own. You are there entirely by your own choice, and move at the pace you feel comfortable with. In my case, I learned how to forage a few years ago, so sometimes I pick snacks or dinner. I also wound up studying Ecology because I wanted to play Skyrim outside, so I'll just find a cool spot and look at the relationships between species.

I do hope that someday I will find someone who actually likes me for who I am as a person and vice versa. Being able to tell who genuinely likes me for who I am as a person vs. who is seeking some sort of validation has been hard, and I'm sure there must be ways.

For a long time, I have wished for a dating site where you can only read profiles, and only once you have good text interactions with a few people do you see a series of profile pics to swipe on. If you happen to swipe on corresponding profiles and images separately, THEN you get a match. Hard to create an addicted user base that way though.

[u/ladykel96]

Honestly, the YT comments on this video are in part incredibly depressing, because several of them are doing the exact thing that Dr. K is asking people to not do - "lol attractive women being lonely is a joke, this person is seeking attention, this post is fake" etc. etc. etc.

I'm in my mid/late-20s. When I was a teenager my aunt thought that I should try to be scouted as a model because I'm quite tall and, you guessed it, conventionally attractive. I have not had a single proper relationship in my life, because I was too psychologically messed up as a teenager to be capable of being a good friend to a lot of people, let alone be a good partner, then work was too busy after college when I had finally gotten my shit together, and then, y'know, the 'rona happened.

I can't say I wholly relate to OP now, but when I was younger? Absolutely. I was pretty. I was smart. What was it about me that made me so unlikeable? Why weren't those things enough? Why was I stuck being alone when none of the rest of my friends were? Were the kids who bullied me so viciously through elementary and middle school that my brain has literally blanked out significant portions of those years just to protect me from the trauma actually right? Was I too weird?

(And, despite the fact that I'm "pretty," when I was in eighth grade and my class did Secret Santa, my "Secret Santa" gave me makeup and nail polish and a note that said "Give yourself a makeover." I had blanked that out until last year because it's pretty shitty to be anonymously told as a thirteen-year-old that you aren't attractive enough when literally everyone has braces and is getting acne for the first time and are all equal degrees of awkward as hell.)

Thankfully when I was a teenager I stumbled upon a really great group of friends. I found people who were able to get into my brain and start convincing me that those childhood bullies weren't correct—I did matter. I was valuable. Who I was as a human being was good enough. This isn't to say that they wouldn't call me on my bullshit (and they still do, 10+ years later), but they wanted me. Not the pretty me, not the packaged version, but the me at eight a.m. after three hours of sleep because Insomnia™, and the me that has PTSD and anxiety and depression, and the me that is really not easy to be friends with a lot of the time, because navigating that was worth it to them to have the rest of me.

That gave me the intimacy that I needed. That gave me the love and support that I needed. It's obviously not the same as being in a romantic relationship, but it allowed me to solidify my own self-worth and understand that I am valuable to other people as more than just a pretty face, and it helped me understand that I'm not alone because those people will always be there on the other end of a text conversation or phone call or to open the door if I drive over to their houses unannounced when I need them.

This isn't to say that I don't want a romantic relationship, but like OP, I'm not interested in casual sex, and being able to get it doesn't solve anything for me. I'm not really sure what to label myself as, but demisexual is probably pretty close to correct. I'm not typically sexually attracted to a person until I've developed an emotional attraction to them as a human being. This means that I've passed up opportunities to hook up with people (not that there have been many, I'm not very social outside of my friend group (those middle school years gave me profound social anxiety) and since I'm not interested in the casual thing, I don't go looking for it) because it's not going to fill any emotional need for me. Quite frankly, just thinking about hooking up with someone without knowing them and then moving on with my life like it's whatever makes my skin crawl.

I don't cry about it now (usually. Rewatching Pride & Prejudice occasionally causes me to have a moment, lol), but that's because I've settled into myself and my friends and my life. I'm trying to buy a house in the next six months and move out of my parents' place, and I've told myself that once I do that, I'll open the door to the possibility of a romantic relationship. Not that I'll hunt for one, not that I'll take the first person who's interested just because they're interested, but that I'll be open to it because I no longer need it, and that means I can take the time to find someone I connect with and genuinely like on an emotional level.

Nobody is doing anyone any favors by taking their own needs and ascribing them to other people (if casual sex is what you want and would help you feel better, great! You do you. Not everyone is wired that way, and it's not wrong if you aren't). I don't want to do what Dr. K discussed and say it's all on you to fix your situation, because it's not, but what might help you to feel better and valued won't necessarily do the same for another person. Don't make the mistake of thinking that what will fulfill you will fulfill someone else. We're all human. Most of us are looking for connection in our own ways (I'm not saying all people are looking for that, the brain does some weird things sometimes). Loneliness comes in many forms and they don't have to be identical to be equally devastating. That's the whole point here. We can validate and have empathy for each other's suffering without devaluing our own.

(I can also assure you that, much like OP, I'm not fake and I didn't make this whole story up, and that I'm not lying about the fact that I used to feel incredibly, profoundly, heartbreakingly lonely the vast majority of the time. I'd like to think that I'm fairly well-adjusted these days and have enough distance to be able to look at that period of my life with a reasonably clinical view. It just took me a long time to really grow into myself and get comfortable with who that person is.)

[u/556291squirehorse]

This is very insightful. We can all be lonely for different reasons and sex doesn't necessarily solve them even for lonely guys. Connection is what helps you feel less lonely and that is them seeing you and you seeing them. Talking truefully about who you are and listening to what they say about themselves. It boils down to being a human to a human.

[u/hulawdl]

Blackpill guys in their room alone whining: I hate the society for only disliking me for being a short and unattractive man.
Dr. K's: The society don't actually hate you. You should leave the echo chamber, and go touch grass. You are disadvantaged so work on your social skills and take showers. Give yourself 5 years of trying and hopefully RNG will be on yourside. People are entitled to who they want to date.
Reddit/ youtube comments: Can we stop having toxic/incel comments? Stop treating women as object! Did you actually try all you can do? Go lift and earn money!

Attractive girls in their room alone whining: I hate the society for only appreciating me for my attractiveness.
Dr. K's: The world treats you differently and that is not okay. Men should be empathic to your struggle and see your achievement as your hardwork. You can't connect with people authentically because you use sex to fill that void. Go into into the woods and discover your true self and see what else you can offer. Talk to someone in an authentically way and get ready to be rejected.
Reddit/ youtube comments: This is so refreshing, I can relate to you so well! Those men who see you as object don't deserve you!

Am I the only one seeing some issues here?

Edit: I forgot that comparsion is not encouraged, but I wonder why.