A profound relational revolution is underway, not orchestrated by tech developers but driven by users themselves. Many of the 400 million weekly users of ChatGPT are seeking more than just assistance with emails or information on food safety; they are looking for emotional support.
“Therapy and companionship” have emerged as two of the most frequent applications for generative AI globally, according to the Harvard Business Review. This trend marks a significant, unplanned pivot in how people interact with technology.
Almost like questioning an AI is free while a therapist costs a LOT of money.
There are other causes here.
They’ve been talking for a while about how the low participation in dating by Gen Z women is because they’re tired of being the entire support system for men experiencing a loneliness epidemic.
It’s a lot of pressure for the women to be under, and so they’re withdrawing.
I’m guessing this is one of the driving forces as well. Lack of real, emotionally intimate human connections around them. Many men are quite fucked in that regard right now.
The flip side of that is vast numbers of Gen Z Men saying many Gen Z women are basically misandrists, who asked them to stop interacting with them unprompted, no more unwanted attention… so they did that, they stopped… and now all they see is IG and TikToks of Gen Z Women complaining that no one asks them out on dates anymore, no one is 6’ tall with a 6 figure income becore the age of 30, and willing to worship them as a queen.
I am not saying this is any kind of objectively accurate to whatever degree, but I am saying that this is the very common, general vibe.
So, in that situation: Why bother?
Many men can actually be fulfilled just staying actually single, as in not even dating single, snd getting their own lives, finances, health, to a better place.
Yes this does though also mean that … because we’ve just got less general, face to face socialization going on that… basically a larger than otherwise number of them will basically develop harmful, reinforcing neuroses, in harmful echo chambers… but at the same time, that applies to women as well.
This is what happens when you jam a broad economic collapse up alongside a highly digital and publicized modern media landscape that is tweaked all to fuck to highlight and push the most extreme version of everything… along with extremely mixed messaging that an only digitally socialized person recieves, but all as a firehose, that is very hard to make true sense of.
So… fuck this shit I’m out… social withdrawal… basically becomes a reasonable mental health improving move, even if it does leave you kinda socially stunted as compared to pre-internet generations.
amen. best thing i ever did for my mental, physical and financial health was to stop dating.
most women I ever dated were nothing but a total drain on my well-being, and did almost nothing to contribute to it positively. the only women who were ever really a net positive to me were female friends who encouraged me in my interests and passions and who shared those same ones with me.
Sadly I’ve never been able to date anyone who saw my passions as a positive… just a negative becuase often their soul interest in the world was getting money, attention, and generating drama out of our relationship so they could ‘feel feelings’. So many ladies see relationships as nothing more than drug dispensing feel good machines (the same women who think all men want is sex… ironically). People need to realize that relationships are way more than that.
I remember so many times trying to have serious talk with my girlfriends and they just… got uncomfortable or just tried to sex me up to shut me up. They dind’t want to deal with anything serious or adult. And these were adult women in their 30s. The only adult things they wanted to talk about was vacation plans or restaurants.
But it sucks, as happy as I am alone I want something more. I want a family and kids and to contribute to society in that way, but frankly, I don’t really meet any women who want that. They just seem to want to be consumers first and foremost and productive members of society who care about more than themsevles… is not really on their wishlist.
I have been volunteering a lot, but it’s really not the same. It’s nice, but like working out, it doesn’t feel like it’s really going anywhere other than just staving off the inevitable decline as best I can. All my volunteer work just is a tiny drop of givnig a shit in the massive bucket of neglect that is our society as we amuse ourselves to death via social media and consumer trends.
I am not saying this is any kind of objectively accurate to whatever degree, but I am saying that this is the very common, general vibe.
I’m glad you’re not because this is patently false. As soon as you get out of the internet you find young people dating is alive and well.
I mean, to a certain degree this is broadly true.
Like we have the numbers, younger generations are waaaay less likely to have had a relationship or sexual encounter by the same age/stage in their life as compared to previous generations, way more people just are relationship inexperienced.
This goes for both genders/sexes, though it is more prominent with younger men than women.
The overwhelming problem is that in the US, so much in person socialization is expensive, basically pay-gated, paywalled.
There are very few third places you can just hang out at for no cost. Public transit sucks or is non existant, cars are super unaffordable due to collapsing economy, and all our cities are designed for using cars to drive from place to place… so very few places are actually walk-navigable…
Everyone is increasingly overweight and overworked (or over homeworked, for students) and overstressed, so they can’t or don’t engage in group meet up hobbies or sports as much as they used to… and ironically even religiosity levels overall trending down means less people are going to church… all the traditional methods of getting socialization and expanding out a friend network in real life are withering.
So, the easier path is to get your socialization, of all kinds, primarily digitally.
But all those most common and popular ways of doing that are also massively manipulative with algos intentionally feeding you whatever ragebait slop appeals to you, personally.
It is very ironic that, as basically a 90s kid myself, very early tech adopter… my view of the vast majority of social media now is that it is basically a mentally harmful and addictive drug that people need to detox from… but when I tell younger people that, they say things like ‘its not that deep bro, everybody has a (whatever) profile’.
There are lots of studies that show that very common levels of social media app usage… do actually reduce attention spans, spread dangerous misinformation, lower academic performance, cause negative self esteem by way of unrealistic standards, of beauty, lifestyle, wealth… brainrot is real, basically.
Like, I am all for the TikTok ban for kids. But also ban all short form video content for kids. Instagram, Youtube shorts, whatever.
This shit is melting peoples brains, it needs to be treated the same way you’d treat a drug epidemic.
We are now at the point where kids give so little of a fuck, have such tiny attention spans and need for constant, rapid fire stimulation… that half of adult Americans read below a 6th grade level, 20-30% of them read below a 2nd grade level, making them functionally illiterate… and thats just with Gen Z now mostly being in those young adult numbers, its gonna be even worse when Gen Alpha graduates and starts trying to enter society/the workforce.
EDIT:
This isn’t even broadly unprecedented.
Look at Japan.
Hikkikomori.
The stagnant economy becomes overly financialized and corporatized and impossibly demanding… so people just drop out of it, or worse, kill themselves from the stress of trying to live up to its expectations…
And well then yeah, in person socializing broadly drops, relationship dynamics become strained and morph, birth rate plummets.
Give it 5 or 10 years and we’ll have something resembling rent a boyfriend/girlfriend services and maid / stud cafes as well, as the stereotypified fascimile of socialization and having a real relstionship becomes a marketable product, and then industry.
Maybe a few areas will even properly legalize and regulate prostitution.
Granted, that’ll be in any areas that remain even kind of blue.
The red areas will just go full theocrat and send you to jail for masturbating, but also re-legalize child marriage, and rework marriage laws into ‘covenant marriage’, where basically the woman functionally cannot divorce the husband.
In summary: cyberpunk hypercapitalism is in fact very very bad for healthy human relationship dynamics.
There are very few third places you can just hang out at for no cost. Public transit sucks or is non existant, cars are super unaffordable due to collapsing economy, and all our cities are designed for using cars to drive from place to place… so very few places are actually walk-navigable…
Yeah a lot of these trends are also easy to break down by economic class. the people suffering the most from the are poorer people. well off upper middle income people experience these problems far less proportionally. because they have the resources to get around the paywalls, and have the well-off parents with the money to pay for all the extra schooling and digital detoxing that is necessary for better life outcomes.
but for the middle class and below… they are cooked. the avenues to success and self-reliance are basically non-existence and and have been shrinking at start rates since the 90s and the school system is become a cesspool that any decent intelligent person wants nothing to do with.
Well I don’t care about your anecdote about the US. That country is lost and young people feeling depressed and isolated is the least of your problems.
Out here in actual civilization though, tik tok youth drama is not representative of reality whatsoever.
Also you shouldn’t go with US Default mode on Lemmy since you guys are a minority here. Most of us are European.
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.
You can use rethoric and anecdotes all you want but at the end of the day (literally) all you need to do is look out the window and see how many people are out socializing and fucking each other like rabbits.
Those Tik Tok girls complaining about men do so because they are outliers who can’t get attention IRL. Simple as.
Cool, I’m glad you’re so enlightened and open minded as to uh … not give a fuck about perspectives from places you aren’t from.
As for you telling me how to use an internet message board… what more do you want from me?
I told you where I am from and what I am talking about.
I’d love to be able to move to Europe and get away from this fucking imploding hell hole of morons.
But I am broke and physically disabled after being the victim of numerous physical assaults.
Are any of ya’ll accepting disabled American aslyum seekers, so we can easily enjoy your civilized world?
Didn’t think so.
Focus on fixing your country and making it a decent place to live. That way you don’t need to go anywhere. That’s what we’ve been doing for decades, and it works.
because they’re tired of being the entire support system for men experiencing a loneliness epidemic.
I’ve got no horse in this race but it appears that ‘men should not be afraid to open up’ articles and tweets were followed by ‘men, we are not your therapist’.
🤷♂️
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.
man is conditioned from a young age not to show feelings
I feel like you skipped over this part way too quickly. Myself and other men have been hearing things like “it’s not manly to cry”, “whining isn’t going to do anything for you”, “being weak is girly”, and countless other things for my entire memorable life
And it’s not just men telling me this. It’s men, women, adults, my classmates, teachers and mentors.
It’s not a good thing. And it’s changing now, which is so good. But man hearing that from your earliest memories makes it really set in.
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.
🤔
That’s interesting… had never seen it put that way before…
It’s almost like telling men that it’s okay to show your feelings is bullshit lol
Do you think this therapist is trying to market therapy and increase his business? I also think the same 🤨
/j
Because they want us to open up, just not to them. T
The irony is so many anti-patriachical feminists, still desire the patriachy. They still want dominant tall wealthy men to romance then, but at the same time they claim to wait to tear these men down into some genderless socialist utopia… where they’d never want to ahve sex with any of the ‘ideal’ men they believe woudl exist in this society.
You can’t have it both ways.
I think there’s a lot more to it than cost. Men, even with considerable health care resources, are often very averse to mental health care.
Thinking of my father in law, for example, I don’t know how much you would have to pay him to get him into a therapist’s office, but I’m certain he wouldn’t go for free.
Also talking to ChatGPT, if done anonymously, won’t ruin your career.
(Thinking of AD military, where they tell you help is available but in reality it will and maybe should cost you your security clearance.)
won’t ruin your career
Granted, but it still will suck a fuck ton of coal produced electricity.
One chat request to an LLM produces about as much CO2 as burning one droplet of gasoline (if it was from coal fired power, less if it comes from cleaner sources). It makes far less CO2 to talk to a chatbot for hours upon hours than a ten minute drive to see a therapist once a week.
Sorry, you’re right. I meant the training of the LLM is what uses lots of energy, I guess that’s not end user’s fault.
To your first question, nop, I have no idea how much energy takes to index the web in a traditional way (e.g MapReduce). But I think, in recent years, it’s been pretty clear that training AI consumes more energy (so much that big corpo are investing in nuclear energy, I think there was an article about companies giving up meeting 2030 [or 2050?] carbon emission goals, couldn’t find it)
About the second… I agree with you, but I also think that the problem is much bigger and complex than that.
Yeah, but also one of them is helpful and the other is the exact opposite. If the choices are AI therapist or no therapist, you are still better off with no therapist.
Got it. No therapist it is.
That’s what I’m doing. That and screaming into a pillow most nights.
I don’t scream into a pillow. I just wake up at dawn and have a panic attack until I have to actually move.
that’s easy to say, but when someone is in a crisis, I would be wrong to judge then for talking to an AI (shitty terrible solution) instead of a therapist that can be unaffordable and also comes with a risk of then being terrible.
a terrible therapist at least has an ethics board
a terrible therapist at least has evidence-based interventions on their side
a terrible therapist at lest has the fact that ~80% of positive outcomes have nothing to do with the interventions or anything the therapist does besides show up and be cool (a statistic I remember quite well from grad school)
AI has none of these things
therapy isn’t fucking magic. it’s a relationship. you can’t have a relationship with an LLM. there’s no such thing as AI therapy, you’re just training it to tell you about CBT worksheets while you bitch about your problems like you’re in a nail salon
The best therapist in the world can still end your career by causing your clearance to be revoked or rendering you unqualified for your unit’s mission.
(Suicide is a big problem in the military, I lost a buddy to it.)
The cheapest therapist in the world may still not be covered by your insurance. (And nothing you write in reply will alter that.)
They should work to make AI therapy better while keeping it totally anonymous. If it were really good it would be the number one use for running a local and disconnected and air gapped LLM: perfectly private therapy with no “we just use telemetry to improve our product” bullshit.
Then maybe a lot more men would seek help/talk about their thoughts and feelings.
The best therapist in the world can still end your career by causing your clearance to be revoked or rendering you unqualified for your unit’s mission.
I’m not in the military but I’ve worked with ts/sci cleared folks at a tech company, and this sounds odd to me. Can you explain a little more here? What’s an example of a problem that, if discussed in therapy, could result in revocation of a security clearance?
They can’t make it better… you can’t have a relationship with an autocorrect
ok.
but the problem is that real therapy is expensive, and unaccessible, while AI is freely accessible, even though it’s shit.
and open ai is profiting from that.
I’m just saying the blame should be aimed at the corporations and the healthcare system, rather than someone who is desperate for help
a terrible therapist can lock you in a room, some people don’t want that risk
I’d be interested on a study there.
I lot of therapy is taking emotions and verbalising them so that the rational part of the brain can help in dealing with things. Even a journal can help with that, so talking to an inanimate machine doesn’t seem stupid to me.
However therapists guide the conversation to challenge the patient, break reinforcing cycles, but in a way that doesn’t cause trauma. A chatbot isn’t going to be the same.
I’m gonna need a source on that.
It’s stupid as hell to share any personal information with a company that is interested in spying on you and feeding your data to the nearest advertiser they can find.
Like seriously – are people using their brains or what?
Donald Trump was ELECTED TWICE. How is the stupidity of humanity not apparent.
are people using their brains or what?
What? No. Seriously, are you new here? And by here I mean Earth.
I see idiots all around me. Everybody only interested in advancing themselves. But if we advanced the group, it would be better for EVERYBODY.
But we as a species are too stupid to build a society that benefits everybody.
So no. No brain use here.
I mean, the question was rhetorical. But I don’t disagree.
Like seriously – are people using their brains or what?
they need therapy, obviously they need help, and blaming them for not doing the most reasonable thing that might be unaffordable is even stupider.
blame predatory AI, openai could in a single afternoon make it so Chatgpt recomends or even helps you find a local therapist, instead of enabling this for profit.
Do they need therapy? Or do they need a world they can actually fucking live in?
It’s not like either one is available to them.
Neither is mutually exclusive, but most likely, both of those.
Everything collects data. To extrapolate, it’s stupid to post on lemmy or shitter because the same will happen.
Alternate title “Men so starved of sources of support they resort to talking to AI”
Edit: have started a new com for men to talk to each other instead of AI [email protected]
Or “men would rather talk to superpowered autocorrect rather than sharing their feelings with family and friends”
This response is why men feel scared and uncomfortable opening up. You are a part of the problem. For your male family members’ sake, I hope you check in on them instead of just being sexist online.
Men feel scared and uncomfortable because they’re afraid to be told they were wrong to hide their feelings?
Have you ever considered not being like this?
probably not but that’s because sexism against men is normalized and you’re not allowed to talk about it unless you’re a neonazi for some reason.
side note, this is exactly why the “young broccoli haired boy to fascist brownshirt” pipeline exists. they have real and genuine issues and instead of getting any sort of community or support virtually every facet of society is telling them their issues are fake and that they are destined to be monsters. then someone like j peterson comes along and tells them “life isn’t so bad, it’s okay, just clean your room and be disciplined, it’ll all start to look up soon champ… and uh… also hate the gays, black people, and other minorities - they’re the woke mob that left you abandoned like this!” people making shocked pikachu face at young men being hardcore MAGAts are so sorely out of touch with what being a man is like and the kinds of trauma that can stem from the male experience. it’s obvious to most of us why this issue exists, i hope. this comment chain is a great example. if you even touch the topic you get barraged with people telling you to essentially shut the fuck up and stop entertaining the idea that men are possibly people too and not some root of all fucking evil in the world.
the amount of literal hate I see towards men in casual discourse is insane. can say the most psychotic shit in most circles nowadays but if you point your malice at the “right kinds” of people most won’t even bat an eye. see people frequently talking about doing unhinged shit to others solely because they are a man or [insert other group they don’t like generally for some stupid fucking reason] and there is a preconceived slight, danger, or aggression. leftists think they’re better people morally but we’re really not. i have seen the exact same bullshit bigotry promulgate every community i know of in the past few years. the same brainrot the conservatives have had since the tea partiers has infiltrated our spaces too. everyone genuinely is dumb, angry, and hateful now.
I am not wholly convinced that our culture being the target of multiple astroturfing campaigns hasn’t degraded people’s capability for nuance, compassion, empathy, and ontology.
.
amen to all this. i really started removing ‘leftists’ people from my life and it was like… so much better because so much of their entity message is just this weird revenge/hate pron against straight white men, and men in general. when ironically, the people they should be angry at are the wealthy… but honestly most of these ‘leftists’ I’ve known were trust fund kids… so that tells you right there why they would never rag on the wealthy…
normal well adjusted people don’t hate anyone or blame anyone for their problems. but for some reason it’s become mainstream A-OK to say horrible awful shit about men that would you get you banned/shitcanned/ostracized if you said ti about anyone else. esp in liberal/left groupthink.
it’s entire the same discourse as neoNazis and all that too… just replace jew/black with white straight men.
this sort of stuff gets downvoted incessantly in leftist spaces which is a damn shame bc i feel like a lot of these places are my home to a certain degree. it makes me feel unwelcome. ik that’s like, the fucking point and why they do it but still.
these sorts of people are just on some weird, misguided, revanchist agenda that necessitates getting “revenge” on certain groups of people instead of sticking with the core principles of the ideology which clearly state that you should kindly refrain from being an asshole. there is nothing to be gained from exacting some revenge fantasy upon straight white men. you’re exactly right, the only people who deserve to have shit flung their way over who they are is the rich and powerful.
I’m here to talk if you need an ear man, I understand you and it sounds like you’ve been through your own personal brand of shit
Edit: Made a com where you can talk more freely without judgement /c/[email protected]
appreciate the offer king. i might check in and occasionally participate in the comm, i like the idea.
my main concern is ensuring there isn’t a weird invasion of the space by neofascists. that’s the main issue with men’s rights spaces currently. it doesn’t seem easy to prevent as every such space i come across has this problem. the exact thing we identify as hating here pervades spaces trying to tackle this problem… something of a catch 22.
i fucking adore the naming, tho. reprieve is exactly what we all need. i think you should really lean into the abandonment of identity and related identity politics for this community. it shouldn’t be about men in particular, it’s about a reprieve from this shitty contemporary world we have grown up into. after all, race or sex or whatever aren’t even real… they’re just arbitrary lines that cultures draw upon the world. important to individuals maybe, yes, but i’ve always felt it to be something of an albatross around the left’s neck. not all right-wing criticisms of “identity politics” are necessarily unwarranted… (😬 oopsie i broke the groupthink too hard that time guys o nooooos 🙈)
If you really honestly don’t understand why what you said was horrible I’m willing to have a conversation with you if you want to DM me to talk about it. For starters, men feel scared and uncomfortable because their serious problems will get made light of just like you did. Or told to “man up”. Which I imagine was on the tip of your tongue
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yeah they are definitely making dumb choices. it’s probably not because they’re all just dumb though. they probably have a lot of external factors pushing them towards that decision.
for example, many discussions tend to find ways to blame and shame them instead of responding with empathy. sort of like this comment. what benefit do you think you get by reframing things to blame the men here?
Have you considered the fact that most of the time, even when people “want to hear mens issues”, they reject them and tell them to man up? Maybe “superpowered autocorrect” could be a vector to nourish this severe lack of openness?
Personally I use AI for this purpose, mostly because it accepts me for who I am and provides genuine advice that has actually helped me improve my life, rather than the people around me saying that I should “put more effort into things”, or “it’s just in your head”.
It’s not “lone wolfing” to stop telling the people who’ve rejected your concerns about your feelings and issues, it’s just the act of not wasting time on those who don’t care.
I can kinda understand the appeal. An AI isn’t gonna judge you, an AI isn’t gonna leave a mean comment or tell you to get over it and man up. It’s giving an unnerving amount of personal information to corporations, but I can sympathise with the thoughts these men are having.
AI might also be giving them better advice than anyone else in their life.
Growing up I certainly had no role models in my entire community. I never found anyone who was remotely helpful until I went to an expensive college that had lots of resources and they were freely accessible to me. Mental, physical, and academic.
A lot of people fail to realize these resources simple do not exist in large swaths of the country/economic bracket. They are mostly concentrated in wealthy and educated areas and given to wealth educated people who live there. If a farmer in Nebraska needs therapy, they will have to drive to multiple hours to Omaha or another urban area to have a decent shot at getting any assistance. Not everyone lives in a major coastal city that have the bulk of these resources.
I dunno about advice, but LLMs are very good at re-stating my meandering thoughts in a concise way that’s easy to communicate to others.
Well those sound like people who aren’t good to open up to.
I do sympathize though, I pretended to be a guy for several decades, and my wife put exactly the same kind of duality on me that men put on women.
I was expected to be sympathetic and nurturing in some contexts and aggressive, jealous, and demanding in others, and I was just supposed to know when to switch.
And there was an amount of vulnerability I was able to display, but beyond that I’d get told to suck it up.
I think somebody needs to come up with an ad campaign that’s Therapy For Men. Big sweaty hairy guys with thick beards looking after each other’s mental health like BROs. It worked to get men to use soap.
(Seriously, I think counseling is too female-coded for a lot of men to be comfortable with it unless they’re fucking the person, or they start to want to fuck the person because they’re unused to talking about things).
I dealt with the same thing in all my relationships. Nothing got my gfs hotter than when I acted like a complete asshole towards other people. They got off the duality of me being shit to people and the being this ‘sweet man’ to them. And they’d get super jealous and bitter if I was kind towards anyone else other than them. It was Toxic AF. It made me hate myself and made me depressed. To know that i had to be a shithead to get my girlfriends to like me.
I’m so much happier single. I’d rather not get laid then have to be a POS asshole like they wanted me to be. Soooo many people get off on anti-social behaviors. I’m also so glad I never got married or had children with these ladies who have such a horrible Zero Sum way of thinking about the world.
They wanted me to be vulnerable, but only in the sense that I was some heroic figure overcoming the odds. If i said I was sad when my dog died or my dad died, then I was a giant pussy to them.
When shitty people only validate your shitty emotions… well that’s why so many women only date shitty men. Because they are turned off sexually by men who are more complex or behave outside of their per-determiend ‘what a man should be’ image. Especially when you reject them for sex… holy shit. Way to see what a lady really thinks of a men when a man turns her down for sex.
In my many years single now, I do a lot of volunteer work. Giving back here and there w/ kids and adults and community building. I’ve never met or a dated lady who thought it was cool. They all think it’s weird to be kind to strangers and/or I’m secretly homosexual if I do so. If it comes up they always get ‘suspicious’.
You’ve met some shitty women. There are some of us out there fighting against sexism in all ways. Not for females but for all people. Sexism hurts everyone :(
My mental image the solution of your last paragraph is a guy and their counsoler just chatting outside chopping firewood or other simple/quiet lawn work.
“I need a therapist, and a lumberjack”
You know, working together on something outside might be absolutely the ticket. Genius.
That was the whole premise of a King Of The Hill episode. Bobby and his friends working out their differences repairing Hank’s truck.
It might even, gasp, offer solutions.
I don’t think the open internet is a great place to open up about your mental health either. Trusted family, friends, and medical/mental health professionals are the best resources. Entrusting something as precious as your mental health to AI or the internet is a profoundly bad idea.
A local llm could (at least appear to) be the best option (on an individual scale) for people that would be reported by mandatory reporters (which mental health professionals are), such as suicidal people or murderers or pedophiles.
An AI isn’t gonna judge you,
Guess what is happening with that chat history.
Naturally. We were beaten up and ostracized if we showed weakness when we were kids. You CAN’T be sharing your feelings like that to another human.
a lot of therapists and psychs are also useless for helping men. because they are women and they are basically only trained to deal with women’s issues and only see women’s emotional processes and processing as ‘valid’. there is this default bias that men’s emotional processing is ‘flawed’.
imo with mental health professionals all my ‘issues’ were blow way out of proportion. i only had one therapist who actaully helped me was a man and that person helped me understand that ‘not everything is your fault’. when all the other therapists/friends/family always 100% told me everything that happens to me is entirely my fault. they also told me it was normal/healthy to vent my feelings by doing productive things (like writing, exercising, relaxing), rather than viewing that as ‘not addressing the problem’.
the issue with so much of this crap is that not only does nobody want to talk to men, it’s that they don’t want to listen and/or the tell us we are ‘talking wrong’. even when we do talk to people, there is only a tiny window of acceptable things we an talk about and way we can talk about them or how selfish it is of him to vent/indulge his legitimate emotions.
a woman can burst into tears over any little thing and everyone wants to help her. a man bursts into tears over his father dying of cancer and all the sudden everyone wants to tell him his reaction is too intense and he should be thinking of how he is making other people feel.
Pretty much every guy has had someone in his life try to get him to ‘open up’ and then we he does he’s met with nothing but hostility, disappointment, and eventually rejection. We are told to shut up and never talk about it again. Never, ever is he met with acceptance or love.
Therapy is just littered with bad therapists, that do more harm than good and give the practice a bad name.
For every 1 good therapist, there are probably 10+ bad ones.
It can be a fucking ordeal to navigate, financially and emotionally, to try and find the one good one.
My worst experience was a therapist which charged me 300 dollars a session to do nothing but talk about how amazing they were, and that I need to just suck it up and be amazing like they are, afterall, it was so easy for them.
Amen.
There is a boatload of bad therapists and bad therapy out there. And sadly it gets a lot more traction and popularity because well… it’s simplistic and easy. It’s the fast food of therapy.
Good therapy is hard and long and complex. And most people simple don’t want to deal with that. They want the diet pill version of therapy. Just make the bad feelings go away, and give me more good feelings.
I don’t think enough analogies are drawn between physical vs mental health. Anyone knows that legit physical health is a long and boring process that takes a lot of discipline and time. Mental health and wellness really isn’t any different. Therapists should also be more like physical trainers… you need to have a specific goal in mind and work towards that goal and really and the endgame should be to no longer need the physical trainer/therapist
Sadly in our economic system the incentive for a lot of people is the opposite and many bad therapist/trainers just want to generate dependency of their clients on themselves and as such they will indulge their clients worse habits to keep them hooked.
Yeah.
and there needs to be more oversight and punishment for objectively bad therapists. and I dont mean bad as in their program didnt work for you, i mean bad, like ones that spend an entire session fellating themselves over how awesome they are, or tell you that they arent here to listen to you bitch and moan about your problems (someone I knew had a therapist say that to them) or whatever other objectively awful things bad therapists too.
and there needs to be more education about therapy, and how there are many different styles and approaches… and not all work for everyone, The system should incentivize people being able to tell their therapist they appreciate their time, but it doesnt feel like their approach is working, and get refered to a different one with a different approach without drama, extra cost, extra paperwork, or headache.
yes, there is an incredibly amount of ignorance, and a lack of oversight about the entire thing.
and so many internet jackasses who think they are experts about it, constantly pushing endless misinformation about every aspect of the process. esp the armchair diagnosing.
‘oh you had a bad day at work? you must have autism/adhd/depression/personality disorder’. or the fact anyone who was ever mean to you once in your life is a ‘narcissist’ or ‘gas lighting’ you.
the bias confirmation is out of hand. even in this very comment thread… soooo many people just banging on their bias confirmation drum and screaming ‘no no no no, men are bad and should just go away and solve their own problems without bothering anyone at all ever!’ as if that attitude isn’t the biggest reason men, especially young men, feel so trapped about their lives.
From the commenter above talking about negative experiences with talking to women and female therapists, I think the real solution is that men need to be proactive about supporting each other. Ranting and raving about how women are terrible and don’t know how to help men with an undercurrent of expectations that women (especially a romantic partner) should fix everything is simply not a tenable mindset.
As a woman who works in the medical field, I am keenly aware of my limitations when it comes to helping men with mental health issues. I think the real, effective solution is for men to start opening up to each other and supporting each other the way that women tend to do among themselves. I don’t mean this as “oh, men are terrible and they need to fuck off somewhere else with their problems”, I mean it as a sincere belief that the best people to help a man through emotional or psychological problems are probably other men given the shared socialization and perspective.
we need more male therapists and teachers. that’s what we need.
we have systematically removed male teachers from the school system due to the pedophilia panic.
I am on my fifth therapist. The first one I was seeing I kinda stopped going and then he retired, then I had a GF cheat on me and that was super brutal so I started going again.
First therapist was the stereotypical “feelings are okay!” kind of therapist, second one she just automatically assumed it was my fault and was basically telling me that cause I’m a man I should have done better, and the third just immediately jumped to medication like halfway through my first session.
Ended up with my current therapist and she’s great. I really like her because she regularly tells me that I’m just straight up being stupid or ridiculous and just need to handle my shit. Which works amazing for me.
Therapy is just littered with bad therapists, that do more harm than good and give the practice a bad name.
This has long been my experience. Although I believe that great therapists are out there, I have yet to encounter someone who didn’t blame me for the problems and cause me to feel rejected. The last person I went to looked over the intake testing and told me that nobody would want me as a client. No joke. I convinced him to let me stay but nothing happened and I burned out after 3 months or so and stopped going.
I’m sorry, you don’t deserve that.
If you have the mental energy/space, there are usually state therapists boards of some kind that you can call and report that behavior too… Too few people do that, though (and I’m including myself on that list), because a lot of people who seek out therapists are in a bad, vulnerable state and just don’t have the mental space to go through with reporting these assholes like they deserved.
Nonsense. The idea that all psychological issues are defined by gender is just the perspective of someone who’s never made any meaningful progress through therapy and/or counseling. Mental health is not a gendered issue and the repetition of this misconception just leads more people to give up without even trying. Yes, the lens of sexual identity comes into play, mainly in terms of cultural gender roles experienced in your part of the world. But, a well trained, experienced therapist will have these considerations while exploring issues you present with. I would argue, that psychiatrists (which is an even moreso male dominated field) are much more of an issue, because their objective is not to help you come to conclusions about yourself. It is to medicate your symptoms away to allow you to function. I am sorry you did not have a good experience yourself, but that is not reflective of therapy, or counseling as a whole and your characterisation of men vs women in therapy is sexist and sounds more like male influencer talking points than lived experience.
how many well trained therapists are there out there who are totally objective, compared to poorly trained ones who will often perpetual their harmful biases?
does anyone know? how do we even measure that? do we just assume people who have a certain degree from a certain program are inherently ‘objective’?
No, but that’s not the argument you were making before. You said therapists are women, women don’t understand the male perspective, implying therapy is ineffective. Ironically, those most hostile towards mental health treatment and self-analysis are often those with the least amount of time in counseling/therapy. Often the ones that would benefit the most out of it. The goal of a therapist is not to make you feel understood, a therapist is supposed to help you understand and come to conclusions about yourself, so that you can improve your life. Everything about coming to terms with neuropathy/trauma/coping mechanisms takes work and self-discipline. Hand-waving away people’s lived experience categorically stating that mental healthcare is ineffective, based on your own (I would bet) extremely limited experience with the field. That’s a lot easier. See how you’re asking me
how many well trained therapists are there out there who are totally objective, compared to poorly trained ones who will often perpetual their harmful biases?
does anyone know? how do we even measure that? do we just assume people who have a certain degree from a certain program are inherently ‘objective’?
As if that de-legitimises any point that I have made in response to those statements? That is childish. See how when it’s your narrow perspective, you view it as reason enough to make blanket statements about therapy, women and mental healthcare as a whole? But, when I offer mine and critique yours instead of addressing the points I make, you expand the scope? To the point I have to contend with Bias over an entire field study and healthcare? That’s because your argument is weak, it’s a fallacy and it’s based on conjecture. I assure you, everyone has biases but again, therapists are there to help you come to conclusions, not give advice. The most harmful bias anyone can have is there own personal biases, which if left unchecked, allows the ego to feel secure, but stops you from growing as a person. That’s why you spaz out and attack therapy as an institution, because my drawing attention to and invalidating your biased opinion makes the ego feel threatened. That’s why you turn it from a conversation into a confrontation, because an argument you feel you can win. If you acknowledge your position is incorrect/prejudiced then that feels like a problem within the self. Which we can’t stand, because in a world of diffuse human interaction we are all the protagonist and we want people to like us. Which is an insight you would have if you had actually ever gone to therapy.
This is pretty sexist.
Coping skills are not gender specific. How they help is different for each individual.
Women have their emotions unsupported just as much as men I know my mom didn’t have anyone caring about how she felt. Pretty sure that’s the stereotype of most American moms, they work all day come home cook and clean too.
I’ve never seen a man cry and be told to stop by anyone other than their own father. I’ve seen countless women be mocked for being emotional.
Sorry bro your comment is far too one sided to be taken seriously by me. Society is hard on everyone.
Yes they are. The genders are massivenly different in a lot of ways, and failure to acknowledge that is sexist.
But keep screaming that anything that disagrees with your particular narrative that women are great and perpetual victims of men and men are always bad, I guess? Because that’s not sexist, at all. lol
it couldn’t be that both men and women are people and both suffer from the same bullshit that they themselves perpetuate? nah.
The genders are massivenly different in a lot of ways
and even if you think that the psychology of genders isn’t different, society treats genders differently and this either from the therapist who reacts differently to different genders, or from the patient who expects difference the point is the same: the construct of gender forces artificial difference, even if it’s not based in real “our brains are the same” science (which they aren’t - same as our biology isn’t quite the same)
equity is different to equality, and equity is actually what is needed
and even if you think that the psychology of genders isn’t different, society treats genders differently and this either from the therapist who reacts differently to different genders, or from the patient who expects difference the point is the same: the construct of gender forces artificial difference, even if it’s not based in real “our brains are the same” science (which they aren’t - same as our biology isn’t quite the same)
amen. brother, sister, or whatever preferred identity you want to be.
more treating people as individuals, less as treating them as stereotypes
But keep screaming that anything that disagrees with your particular narrative that women are great and perpetual victims of men and men are always bad, I guess?
Incel talk
read the whole comment
I did, but your main assertion that therapists are women, women don’t understand the male perspective therefore mental healthcare for men, (like talk therapy and counseling) are ineffective. Is not just completely wrong, it is dangerous. You start talking about how gendered biases effect the outcome of therapy. Ignoring that psychology is an incredibly complex, extremely well-documented, highly diverse and well regarded field of study, That’s like saying you wouldn’t trust a female virtuoso guitarist to perform ‘Master of Puppets’ because her female perspective would bias her against playing a solo written by a man. I am a man, I have had some success in therapy and counseling. I need more work, I’ll admit. But, all of the best practitioners I have worked with have been women. If you go to counseling, with a social worker, or a master’s student in psychology, yeah that can be a bit dodgy. But the idea that a registered psychotherapist, a doctor, would not be able to provide effective treatment because women can’t understand men is absolutely petulant. It is a myth, pervaded by a lot of influential male voices online and pop-psychology. It misunderstands the whole purpose of talk therapy and then it’s mis-characterised as “giving advice” and “putting biases in your head.” When psychotherapists are literally just there to help you confront and come to terms with things that you identify are affecting your ability to live. This stupid argument is always propped up by the same idea of women not being able to understand the male perspective, goes hand-in-hand with reported instances of mental health disorders. When really, the disparity between the sexes in terms of reported mental issues, is actually because people make arguments like yours. They say “all therapists are women and women don’t understand the male perspective” and “women report higher levels of depression and anxiety, therefore mood disorders are women’s issues.” When, in fact, it is men that dominate the field of psychotherapy, psychology and psychiatry. It is also us men that are killing themselves in record numbers, it is us that drive cars into street markets, it is us that shoot into crowds of people and then turn the gun on ourselves and it is boys that go online and see men like you. Making these harmful, disingenuous, ignorant arguments that makes them believe that their mental health is unimportant and that any pain, or issue they are having difficulty with is their problem and a flaw in themselves. Which just leads to self-victimisation.
I have read your comment, I have read all of your comments in this thread and your rhetoric is not just wholly emblematic of someone who has never done any meaningful work in therapy, it is dangerous and invalidating to kids who don’t have the experience and don’t know any better. That’s why you expand your argument, from “women therapists” to the entire field, because then it goes from sexist nonsense, to a broader discussion on the existence of human bias in the field. Conveniently, then you don’t have to confront the obvious flaws in what you’re saying. Personally, I wouldn’t trust someone, who has never so much as opened a textbook on abnormal psychology, to be a great judge of the existence of gendered biases in contemporary psychological care. I swear, if more men could be brave enough to admit that we endure psychological strain and experience issues through that strain that manifest in ways that effect our lives, we wouldn’t have Trump. Roe V Wade would be codified. So many of today’s problems exist because of the stigma round men seeking professional help with their mental health. So, yes I read your whole comment, I recognise your arguments and your perspectives. I say they are categoriaclly prejudiced, unhelpful, disingenuous and dangerous. When young men see this stuff and haven’t developed a sense of identity yet, they adopt this. Because this is what they think they’re supposed to believe, because boys look to contemporary male ideas and figures to emulate what they perceive to be masculinity. That’s how you get idiots on the Internet trying to discredit what is arguably the single most needed field of medicine in the world right now. When those men face crises, in their lives and need help, where do they go? If the main medical avenue of psychotherapy is seen as weak, or feminine or ineffective. Where do they go? That’s how you normalise male loneliness and hopelessness. You make young men feel like no one can understand what they’re going through, or help them understand themselves and navigate it. That is how you get drug addicts, that is how you get alcoholics. That’s how you get radicalisation, incels, domestic terrorists and victims of suicide. So, maybe just stop with the whole injustice over the feeling of being a man whose feelings are not understood. “But therapy doesn’t work, because nobody can understand me bro” and actually go to therapy. It might help you empathise with other people’s perspectives, perhaps you could analyse why you have these uninformed beliefs about this field of healthcare.
Which you seem so impassioned about discrediting and maybe it could even help you understand why it feels like no one gets you. Why you feel this is the correct way to approach mental health issues. The effect your words have on the well-being of impressionable members of our sex and what that stigmatisation of mental health problems and empathetic emotional recognition means, for men as a whole. What it means for our feelings about our place in society. It would help all of us, a lot more, than you maligning being told to “man up” whilst also perpetuating the concept of “man up” by spreading actual lies that psychotherapy doesn’t work for men. If society’s view of male mental health is so troubling to you. Maybe, don’t regurgitate misinformation about mental health that specifically invalidates the feelings and experiences of men struggling with addiction, or trauma, or grief, or psychological disturbance? Men, who would otherwise be comfortable enough in their masculinity and strong enough emotionally, to admit they have a problem to seek out professional help. Mental healthcare is healthcare, it is not a moral failing, personal flaw, or emasculating experience. If you actually gave a shit about men’s issues you’d understand that. Instead of just, first, trying to sound above it (by being incorrect about what therapy is and largely sexist), then posturing victimhood by co-opting men’s issues and trying to make the conversation about how society disregards male feelings and how nobody gets us. Your feelings are your own and you can feel however you’d like about anything. But you don’t preface that it’s your feelings, or your opinion based on shit you have absorbed from other male figures and spaces. You say this is how it is, before saying that therapists are women who are biased against men. Which is not true and reinforces this idea that men and women are completely diametrically opposed opposites and not just humans with the same breadth of emotions and very similar psychological conditions. Bi-polar depression doesn’t care what genitals you have. Trauma effects everyone. Mental health is NOT a gendered issue. Your reasoning throughout this entire thread is deeply flawed, divisive and doesn’t even make sense. If you feel like nobody cares about men’s feelings and men’s psychological and social issues, why is your position to take away one of the only recognised avenues by which men who are suffering can have those issues validated and explore their feelings in a safe, non-judgemental way? That is what you do when you lie like that and misrepresent the purpose and efficacy of psychotherapy.
You argue for positions directly in opposition to men’s issues. It’s quite extraordinary. I doubt everything you say about your experiences with therapy, just based on how you talk about it as a gendered issue. Also, the idea that people with biases put ideas in your head. Which is genuinely, just a fallacious red-pill talking point, that completely goes against the process and purpose of talk therapy. It allows men to live in denial about their actions and feelings and also validate those insecurities because nobody understands the male position, society doesn’t care and it’s not our fault. Which is all well and good, until your misrepresentation leads to someone’s death. So, I’ll say it again.
Incel Talk
Godamn son, didn’t have to nuke him
Well put, though.
Again. Coping skills are not gender specific they’re individual specific.
Nobody is screaming. And yes women are victims of men, have you spoken to any of them about it? Because it’s rather helpful to have those conversations.
Your comment is just very one sided and that’s the side that has the most power on the planet and as a member of that side I have just as much perspective of you and I’m here to say – nah to most of what you said.
Men’s #1 issue is lack of empathy towards women, they isolate half the planet from supporting them. There’s your solution.
Men’s inability to open up is a trained behavior, and is reinforced the most by the group doing the most child care: women. Everytime a boy that cries gets told to “man up” that stereotype is repeated to them. This produces an echo that reverbs through most of society, and especially children, who then mock peers that express emotions.
Women are training their own oppressors. There is enough blame around for all genders.
No that’s ridiculous and hilarious to say. I’d agree there is enough to blame everyone but you’re not, you’re blaming women.
I’ve never been told to man up by a woman, only men. Ridiculous to say that.
Is it really that ridiculous? Biologically seen, men’s properties are mostly due to genetic selection by women over thousands of years, if they are conscious about it or not. Men that are more attractive to women are preferred partners, and the selection pressure is mostly on men, since women have a much higher biological cost in pregnancy, therefore they are much more “picky”. That is pretty proven science, and this pressure is also found in culture: men have the attributes that women want them to have to give them an advantage.
It would only take 2-3 generations of women AND men doing child care to fix those issues by reinforcing openness and acceptance, but that takes education, esp in the human sciences, and education for the masses in the US has been dismantled long ago even before the current razing.
Your comment is just very one sided and that’s the side that has the most power on the planet and as a member of that side I have just as much perspective of you and I’m here to say – nah to most of what you said.
The only ‘side’ that has power is the wealthy. But keep banging your gender war drum, it probably gives you meaning and purpose in life to collectively blame 'me’n for all the worlds ills as if anyone who has a penis or wants a penis is entirely the same.
Drink that kool aid. yum yum. Donald Trump and his buddies thank you for your vote.
The only ‘side’ that has power is the wealthy.
Pivot to wealth inequality because?
But keep banging your gender war drum, it probably gives you meaning and purpose in life to collectively blame 'me’n for all the worlds ills as if anyone who has a penis or wants a penis is entirely the same.
You are the one who made the issue about differences in sex and/or gender.
No wonder you made no progress in therapy. You’re completely obtuse.
Also, no one is blaming men for their life’s problems. That person, would need therapy. Also, please don’t speak for men as a pejorative, your views are not reflective of any kind of monolith within my sex as a class of people and continually self-victimising under the guise of speaking for men’s issues is disingenuous and pathetic.
i pivot to wealth inequality because the wealthy have all the resources and the rest of us don’t have enough.
that includes access to medical care and mental care. easiest way to get healthcare and therapy is to be rich so you can pay out of pocket and skip the limits/lines imposed by insurance companies.
a lot of people’s mental and health problems would also simple be alleviated by being able to have better food and a better work-life balance, both which are privileges of the wealthy that the less economically fortunate do not have access to.
these are straight facts, but i’m sure you’ll go into denial mode about how the poor and mentally unwell should just become their own therapists or something.
Removed by mod
I thought it wasn’t gender specific? This is very sexist of you. wags finger
See how unhelpful that is to the conversation
Type anything to show you’ve never been to therapy: ^ this post
Literally in therapy but okay. Continue to reject my perspective and unsupport a fellow dude. Hypocrites.
dude people here just want to dunk on men because it makes them feel good about themselves. it’s that sad, and that simple. they don’t care about having empathy for men, men are not ‘people’. they are ‘others’.
they don’t really give a shit about… the issue at hand or the issues in the therapy industry/society that systematically disenfranchise many men.
unironically they want men to ‘man up’ and ‘fix’ the problems and never acknowledge them. Because that is inconvenient for them and their viewpoints.
because to them everything is a weird power struggle for their particular disenfranchised group, and they see anyone else acknowledging anything else struggles as a detriment to their cause. they lack the big brain thought that maybe lots of people suffer in lots of different ways and that it’s not some zero-sum game about ‘who suffers the most’.
as if men’s issue with the mental health care system… don’t also apply to to various other groups. of which any one person can belong to multiples of those groups.
Who is “they” because the “they” is other men.
So why are we like mad at women in the comments it’s nonsense. Why disparage healthcare and therapy it’s nonsense.
The issue at hand is one demographic struggles to extend empathy and therefore doesn’t get it in return. Make the first step, be empathetic in your life and I swear if you respond saying you are I’m gonna laugh because no, reading your responses you’re not, you’re very “you” focused.
There’s no power struggle, and any you sense is disenfranchised groups trying to get power back from, guess who?
Who said I am a dude?
Dude is nongendered everyone is a dude, nice try tho trying to pull this though
I don’t agree
You can share them to fellow humans here now /c/[email protected]
Like… yeah?
Tried to open to a girlfriend about a sensitive topic - she got the ick.
Tried to make an appointment with a psychiatrist - got a very hateful rejection because of my place of birth.
Damn, even when I try to uplift a friend, I use phrases like ‘you got this before, you’ll get it now’.
I don’t know how to be a man, mentally
Getting rejection because of place of birth is worth getting that doctors license revoked, find out which body governs doctors in your location and file a complaint
Haha, not every place is in the US. Hopefully, I won’t face this kind of treatment as I do not live in that shit hole of a country
I never said it was the US, do rules and regulations governing doctors behavior not exist in your country?
IDK, really. As I said, I left the country where this psychiatrist lives.
not every place is in the US
Thank Sithrak for that, jeez…
Become a rich jacked sociopath.
That’s most manly thing you can do apparently.
Sorry, I will pursue happiness instead
The amount of sexism in this comment section is…unnerving. Does a community exist for male identifying people to talk and share their troubles in a non hostile space? If it doesn’t I’ll make one.
Edit: No idea what I’m doing but [email protected]
The amount of sexism in this comment section is…unnerving. Does a community exist for male identifying people to talk and share their troubles in a non hostile space? If it doesn’t I’ll make one.
No. Because if it it did it would be shut down as being hostile and offensive to women and a space for proto-rapists to hang out.
Probably the closest space any guy could get is AA or NA meetings.
Too bad for them I made one
Sorta agree. Men only spaces make me, a dude, uncomfortable because y’all are weird about women
Yeeah agreed. So this is specifically not gonna be about that and if I see any of that shit it’s getting nixed… I just want all these guys who have no where to turn to to…well, have somewhere to turn to. Each other.
that’s what the manosphere is dude.
and i bet you don’t like that either. right?
because that’s what you get when everyone shuns men. these men go to other men who accept them, and well you get the results we are getting. the manosphere is the only place many people can find any acceptance or advice.
Well if you give up before you start just because the existing options are shitty then that makes you part of the problem, doesn’t it?
dude, you are the problem.
that’s what you refuse to acknowledge. the problem is people like you, claiming that it’s not your problem, and those awful men looking for help and advice should just ‘go away’. because they upset you.
this is precisely how rich people feel about the homeless. ‘just go away, we don’t like you, but we refuse to help you and your very existence is an offensive to us.’
Where is he saying it’s not his problem? He’s literally doing the exact opposite and making it his problem.
Probably the closest space any guy could get is AA or NA meetings.
what do these abbreviations stand for?
alcoholics anonymous and narcotics anonymous
Alcoholic Anonymous
Narcotics Anonymous
AA = Alcoholics Anonymous
NA = Narcotics Anonymous
Both are treatment programs for their respective addictions.
Would you mind giving the community a name where it can easily be found? Such as /c/mental-health-men or sth.
Ah well, unfortunately the community name is set, there’s no changing it after it’s created. Maybe I should’ve made it more searchable but hopefully we can spread it by word of mouth enough where it’ll take off. Also I kinda wanted it less intimidating clinical sterile sounding and more just a homey place where people can feel safe to talk openly, just a li’l reprieve from the outside world.
I fail to see malicious sexism. Do you mind quoting them?
i’d like to be very clear here… a lot of discussion about men’s spaces is thinly veiled sexism by incels… that doesn’t mean there’s not a problem, it just means that incels are attracted to “it’s not my fault”
that said, there’s a comment up thread that captures it pretty well
… mental health professionals all my ‘issues’ were blow way out of proportion … always 100% told me everything that happens to me is entirely my fault. they also told me it was normal/healthy to vent my feelings by doing productive things (like writing, exercising, relaxing), rather than viewing that as ‘not addressing the problem’.
the issue with so much of this crap is that not only does nobody want to talk to men, it’s that they don’t want to listen and/or the tell us we are ‘talking wrong’. even when we do talk to people, there is only a tiny window of acceptable things we an talk about and way we can talk about them or how selfish it is of him to vent/indulge his legitimate emotions.
… a man bursts into tears over his father dying of cancer and all the sudden everyone wants to tell him his reaction is too intense … someone in his life try to get him to ‘open up’ and then we he does he’s met with nothing but hostility, disappointment, and eventually rejection
it’s a meme (not in a “haha” joke way: in the actual meaning of the world; a thing that is repeated often) these days that there are horrible men who tell women (re sexism) “you must have misunderstood”… and the point of that is that men don’t have the life experience as a minority to be able to understand sexism, transphobia, etc (people treat them differently, and even if they see it they often can’t identify it because they’re not accustomed to listening for it 24/7)
that same situation exists for men too… men are certainly not a minority, but nobody is allowed to say that someone’s experience is invalid… there’s a lot of people dismissing these experiences in this thread, and if it were reversed: a woman complaining about a man making a sexist comment, a gay man (of which i’m one) complaining about homophobia, there wouldn’t be any pushback at all because we’ve come to agree that this shit happens
we know that toxic masculinity exists, we know that societal expectations of men are sky high (the suicide rate for men in particular is HUGE)… we’re clearly doing something wrong, as a society, dealing with male mental health… when people come out and tell us their experiences, it absolutely is sexist to write off those experiences as invalid: “i don’t think that kind of thing happens because i haven’t seen it”, is absolutely (anything)-ist language
is it on the same level as problem as sexism or racism? probably not… but denying the problem helps nobody… denying the problem, in this case, makes the problem so much worse and pushes people to lash out and become sexist, racist, homophobic, etc (which is also not to remove blame from them - all those things are wrong and a personal choice and should have personal repercussions)
I expected you to mean people exhibiting toxicity and not reporting about it. I was surprised because the comments seemed civil at large. Thank you.
yeah id say it’s not overt, but that’s kinda the problem… it’s almost difficult to identify, so when it comes to mental health for men a lot of the time society, therapists, etc almost gaslights us into thinking our problems aren’t problems
if it were overt it’d be easy to identify… the fact what it’s not, the fact that men are the majority, and are the problem in a lot of cases pushes people to certain conclusions (including ourselves about our own problems)
mental health is complex af
incels are people. their problems are legitimate problems.
why society can’t acknowledge this is beyond me. I guess because it’s socially unpalatable.
incels or any extremist thing (terfs, religions extremists, etc) … is a product of the same issues. but people just want those people to ‘go away’ and not address the issues that would actaully make them go away… because that is hard.
their problems are legitimate problems sure, but in a lot of cases problems with a lot of those groups can be summed up with a couple of things:
- it’s different to my world view and i don’t like it
- i think i deserve something and am not getting it
those are different kinds of problems to acknowledging your own feelings, or people are using me and trampling over me… both are deserving of help, but incels, terfs, extremists in general are harming others with their problems
you’re free to swing your arms until they come into contact with my body
these classes of people are harmful to others - i don’t think anyone thinks they aren’t deserving of help, but they are dangerous in a completely different way
so are we going to help them, or are we going to wash our hands of them and let the problem fester and grow?
incels need positive reinforcement to loop them out of their cognitive loop. not shame and harassment that further entrenches it.
the easiest way to get someone who is hateful about some group or thing… is to introduce them to it in a positive manner.
I see a lot of people in this thread reacting with open hostility and derailment every time men’s issues are mentioned. Have you tried not being a part of the problem?
Allowing men’s issues to even be addressed risks giving legitimacy to the fact that these issues even exist. And if they exist, men can no longer be that evil monolith that exists only to be torn down and used as the cause for whatever is wrong with the world.
After all, the zero-sum game must be properly reinforced with an appropriate evil that cannot be allowed to have any weaknesses or redeeming attributes.
There are people like that for anything related to AI.
Combine that with men stuff and this going to be crack for all of those people
Look, if you can afford therapy, really, fantastic for you. But the fact is, it’s an extremely expensive luxury, even at poor quality, and sharing or unloading your mental strain with your friends or family, particularly when it is ongoing, is extremely taxing on relationships. Sure, your friends want to be there for you when they can, but it can put a major strain depending on how much support you need. If someone can alleviate that pressure and that stress even a little bit by talking to a machine, it’s in extremely poor taste and shortsighted to shame them for it. Yes, they’re willfully giving up their privacy, and yes, it’s awful that they have to do that, but this isn’t like sharing memes… in the hierarchy of needs, getting the pressure of those those pent up feelings out is important enough to possibly be worth the trade-off. Is it ideal? Absolutely not. Would it be better if these systems were anonymized? Absolutely. But humans are natural anthropomorphizers. They develop attachments and build relationships with inanimate objects all the time. And a really good therapist is more a reflection for you to work through things yourself anyway, mostly just guiding your thoughts towards better patterns of thinking. There’s no reason the machine can’t do that, and while it’s not as good as a human, it’s a HUGE improvement on average over nothing at all.
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In my experience, it’s likely that some of those downvotes come from reflexive “AI bad! How dare you say AI good!” Reactions, not anything specific to mental health. For a community called “technology” there’s a pretty strong anti-AI bubble going on here.
Literally yesterday we had post about getting involuntarily committed due to psychosis from AI sycophantically agreeing with them about everything. The quote I remember from the ai in that “yes you should want blood. You’re not wrong.”
Using these as therapy is probably the worst thing we could do.
For a community called “technology” there’s a pretty strong anti-AI bubble going on here.
Are you surprised people have opinions about technology, in a community dedicated to discussing technology?
No, just surprised about how uninformed and knee-jerk those opinions are.
You know, I don’t even disagree with that sentiment in principle, but expecting people to suffer when they could benefit from a technology because they only see the threats and dangers makes them no different than antivaxxers.
It is possible and logically consistent to urge caution and condemn the worst abuses of technology without throwing the baby out with the bath water.
But no… I guess because the awful aspects of the technology as far as IP theft are - rightfully - the biggest focus, sorry, poor people, you just have to keep sucking it up and powering through! You want empathy, fork over the $100 an hour!
yep, if someone disagrees with me, it’s usually because they’re unhinged. People rarely know things that I don’t, because I am very smart. there’s no way that anyone downvoted that post because it makes statements that are inconsistent with the current scientific knowledge around this subject, because no such knowledgeable exists. I know this because if it did exist i would know about it, as I’m very smart. my AI therapist told me so. and i see nothing wrong with that post. so anyone who does must be a fool.
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therapy does not have to be expensive.
But it is though.
Your medicaid patients?
Poor. By definition.
Sure they might not pay a copay, but they pay for it in gas money to get to that visit, their barely running car now breaking down from visiting you, time off work they can’t really afford, time filling out reams and reams of fucking paperwork to be able to qualify for anything, likely when they’re already in a mentally comprimised condition to some extent… its all very stressful.
Which is very bad for mental health.
we have no reason to believe it would be any better than a paper journal and a CBT worksheet.
And the part you don’t want to admit (at least here) is that … that’s actually quite helpful in and of itself for a lot of people.
Have a few sessions with a live, in person therapist, to teach you CBT, give you the paperwork, walk you through it.
Not all, but many people can take it by themselves from there, and not need to keep wasting time and energy on continually requalifying for medicaid, getting to and from psych appointments, dealing with scheduling delays and unavailability, etc.
Yep, a lot of people are also helped by basically just having someone to be able to talk to and feel heard.
But… that’s often doable by just making either a friend or even casual acquaintance with someone who is capable of, and has the capacity for reflexive empathy.
Much less stress and paperwork involved there.
And also yes, some people with much more serious issues need much more serious help.
Unfortunately, the entire medical system in the US is utterly broken, and the only real solution is having a system that … isn’t broken, so that comprehensive screening and diagnosis is easily available without huge delays and costs… and more broadly, those people need to have the first two levels of maslow’s hierarchy of needs taken care of.
But currently our society basically just takes those people and throws them into the streets, evicts them, forecloses on them, incarcerates them.
There simply is no systemic way to help those people without major systemic changes… and those ain’t happening, they’re moving in the opposite direction.
…
The problem with LLMs as therapy is that they are wildly overconfident, agreeable to the point of encouraging delusions and dangerous behavior, they hallucinate facts that aren’t real… and they are not actually capable of legitimate critical thinking or reasoning.
They also will not introduce you to concepts you have never heard of before which you do not know are or could be very useful, unless you directly ask them to do that, and even then… they obviously are not experts themselves and may suggest dubious ideas.
But also, at the same time… people often do form what they will describe as meaningful relationships with an LLM. So… its not that ‘it doesn’t happen’, its that its a psuedorelationship, a fascimile of a relationship, lacks in person interaction, a real human modulating their intonation, having micro expressions, body language, etc etc.
So somewhere they feel safe to do so. Says something pretty fucked up about our culture that men don’t feel safe to open up anywhere. And no, it’s not their own fault.
What a clickbait. Of course people are picking feee resource with zero friction over 120$ an hour half a day event.
in australia we have (limited) free mental health services (i wanna say 8 free sessions with a therapist?)… this still holds true
it’s not only about money
Another aussie here, Headspace is great too
yup! and absolutely worth the mention that if you’re queer (qlife), struggling with specific issues - alcohol, gambling, finance, eating disorders, etc - there’s specific support available to a lot of people in australia, the US, europe, etc
if you need help, help is available! find one of these services who can help you find the specific support that you need, and go from there :)
as a gay man, i found a lot more help when i started seeing services that specialised in queer health :)
yall deserve someone who understands what you’re going through in life
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TBH this is a huge factor.
I don’t use ChatGPT much less use it like it’s a person, but I’m socially isolated at the moment. So I bounce dark internal thoughts off of locally run LLMs.
It’s kinda like looking into a mirror. As long as I know I’m talking to a tool, it’s helpful, sometimes insightful. It’s private. And I sure as shit can’t afford to pay a therapist out of the gazoo for that.
It was one of my previous problems with therapy: payment depending on someone else, at preset times (not when I need it). Many sessions feels like they end when I’m barely scratching the surface. Yes therapy is great in general and for deeper feedback/guidance, but still.
To be clear, I don’t think this is a good solution in general. Tinkering with LLMs is part of my living, I understand the jist of how they work, I tend to use raw completion syntax or even base pretrains.
But most people anthropomorphize them because that’s how chat apps are presented. That’s problematic.
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ChatGPT (last time I tried it) is extremely sycophantic though. Its high default sampling also leads to totally unexpected/random turns.
Google Gemini is now too.
And they log and use your dark thoughts.
I find that less sycophantic LLMs are way more helpful. Hence I bounce between Nemotron 49B and a few 24B-32B finetunes (or task vectors for Gemma) and find them way more helpful.
…I guess what I’m saying is people should turn towards more specialized and “openly thinking” free tools, not something generic, corporate, and purposely overpleasing like ChatGPT or most default instruct tunes.
Maybe because it’s cheaper, easier and you’re not judged by other person.
You get what you pay for. Would these same people take cancer treatments from the same LLM?
Tbh, yeah. I’m a woman with an inoperable brain tumor, and I can completely understand why people would be reluctant to accept “nothing to be done” as a real answer.
If I thought I deserved to live, I’d probably talk to a LLM about it because this topic drags everybody down, and my therapist only sees me once a week. Though, I’ve heard its good for helping people not live, so maybe its worth a shot after all.
If I thought I deserved to live
But you do, everyone deserves to live.
Nobody deserves this kind of pain
Agreed. I’m just saying you deserve to live. Whether you do should be your choice, not your doctor’s or your government’s.
Part of me is ok with this in that any avenue to get mental health resources can be better than nothing. What worries me is that people will use ChatGPT for this sort of thing and these models will not be good help.
I’ll admit I tried talking to a local deepseek about a minor mental health issue one night when I just didn’t want to wake up/bother my friends. Broke the AI within about 6 prompts where no matter what I said it would repeat the same answer word-for-word about going for walks and eating better. Honestly, breaking the AI and laughing at it did more for my mental health than anything anyone could have said, but I’m an AI hater. I wouldn’t recommend anyone in real need use AI for mental health advice.
I’d say make a grilled cheese sandwich with quality Gruyere and Cheddar and take a nap after.
AI will reinforce delusional thinking. This is definitely not good.
more delusional people means more people that can make good music
Honestly of they could program a halfway decent AI therapist then art least it could take some of the load off our already insufficient mental health professionals by dealing with the lighter-weight cases, leaving the psychotherapists free to deal with the especially sick people.
The real problem becomes when bad or non scientific advice gets regurgitated to people over and over.
So… AI.
Some people would rather yalk to something they know is fake than to talk to a person who may or may not be.
