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Comment by hardwaregeek | Hacker News Reader

This is a little left-field, but have you considered therapy? One underrated benefit of therapy is that it can help you analyze social situations and build the necessary skills to be more social. Therapists are professionals at talking to people and building a rapport after all.

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I suffer from severe depression in general and social anxiety around more than a handful of people, and have talked to therapists regarding this. One huge benefit of therapy is that I was quite quickly able to answer the question of __why__ I feel the way I do, especially around new people I meet. But it is a whole another thing to actually being able to "fix" it. The way I think about it is that I know what the problem is _in theory_, but have no idea how to come up with a _practical_ fix for it.

When I was less depressed, I was able to join a local D&D group, go for bar trivia nights, etc. but as I became more depressed/anxious/stressed (coz of personal and professional situations), it became harder to push myself to become sociable and not get anxious around crowds.

So I think the main point that the parent comment is trying to say is that people need to recognize that problems that may seem to have simple and straightforward "solutions" (like "have you considered therapy") are significantly harder for some individuals purely due to other mental health issues.

I am not trying to fault you, but it is a thing I see in a lot of my friends/peers/relatives is that it gets harder to understand how different mental health issues affect different people in incredibly different ways.

>This is a little left-field, but have you considered therapy?

Your advice (as well-meant as it may be) is exactly as helpful as the extrovert, mentioned by the parent, who gives the advice to "just have more fun". It's not a lack of knowing what to do. It's a profound lack of "activation energy".

Completely the opposite. It's the difference between a non-medical doctor diagnosing someones medical condition and telling them to go see a real doctor. Sometimes people don't know when to go see a doctor and need some help knowing when they should go. Their advice was completely appropriate given the situation.

The advice “see a therapist “ is often valid but by itself pretty clueless. If you ever have dealt with therapists you know that a lot of them aren’t very good. And finding one you click with can be very exhausting and expensive expensive. I have done this for a few years and it was one of the most depressing things I have done in my life.

Therapists are in extremely short supply right now. I recently got a wait-list for four months where I live.

The intervening period of time reminds me that I'm supposed to be in therapy, that I might need therapy, but am instead unable to see anyone. That makes my day-to-day life feel wrong, moreso than if I had never considered it as an option.

I have done therapy and also CBT. Part of it was in a group setting. It was pretty successful for some in the group but for others like me it did nothing. I have come more and more to the conclusion that some people are naturally not good at math and others aren’t good in social situations. I am sure there are therapists who could help me do better but finding therapists and working with them is by itself a very energy draining and exhausting process. If I had infinite money and time it may be easier but repeatedly investing a lot of trust, time, energy and money into a therapist that doesn’t work out is exhausting and depressing.

Over the years I have found a way to live my life in an OK manner. There are some things in life that aren’t accessible to me but there are plenty of other things I can experience that are rewarding too. I am lucky that my social anxiety and autistic traits aren’t extreme and I have enough intelligence to understand things. Other people have it way worse.

If 1-on-1 and group therapy isn't your thing, you might look into T-Groups [0][1]. The ones I've attended were mostly social interactions with strangers where there was an expectation everyone would give blunt, straight-forward feedback as to how people's communication was landing. The facilitators also had a few structured learning/exercises to keep things moving, but most of it was group directed. T-Groups are popular in MBA programs as a way to help future leaders better understand their communication styles, be more authentic and more receptive to noticing the reactions of the people they're leading. They're somewhat of a middle ground between group therapy and communications training exercises that you see in some corporate settings. But they can be pretty powerful in surfacing feedback that people are normally too polite to give you directly as well as giving you structured practice in building authentic relationships.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-groups

[1] https://www.edbatista.com/2018/06/a-brief-history-of-t-group...

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