You need to evaluate the benefit to you of having a group of people who are willing to listen to you and call your bullshit, against the cost to you of communicating what you are trying to do. I think that LW is one of the best places on the internet to find people who will take you seriously enough and provide fairly constructive advice. I also think that the internet is a bad place to find those people.
My personal advice: Befriend a liberal arts college graduate using any of the rote procedures for doing so, then explain your position above and request that they “Listen to me describe myself and call out the mistakes I am making in observing myself.” The reason I suggest lib arts grads is that they are the group I find most likely to want to participate in parent-adult interactions (as defined by Eric Berne in the transactional analysis bible Games People Play). I suggest you read that book if you suspect any moral problems in the deliberate manipulation of people to gain a specific advantage; with the right kind of person, the course of action I describe favors them more than you.
Well, my “I” is a bit fuzzier than most people’s, so the benefit to me is more about the benefit to my goals than the benefit to my body/mind locus, if that makes any sense?
And while the internet is a terrible place to find such people, I’m a bit isolated in real life, and tend to cause friendships to detonate spectacularly due to weird emotional resonance issues and generally freaking the hell out of people. So the level of detachment afforded by a forum is probably a better option, in the long run.
“Benefit to you” is defined in exactly the manner in which it is; I have some conscious input into what benefits me, but not conscious fiat.
If you have trouble interacting long-term with people, try a different style: meet people in a strongly structured format and only slowly move outside of that structure. I find gaming clubs useful for that; bridge might be the best case, because it is very much structured even in playing, and is normally a significantly different demographic than I think you are.
What I am suggesting you look for is an amateur counselor. Professional counseling is expensive, ineffective, and scary (ask anyone who’s been threatened with institutionalization). I think that finding one in meatspace is a better return on investment for your time than finding one on the internet.
You need to evaluate the benefit to you of having a group of people who are willing to listen to you and call your bullshit, against the cost to you of communicating what you are trying to do. I think that LW is one of the best places on the internet to find people who will take you seriously enough and provide fairly constructive advice. I also think that the internet is a bad place to find those people.
My personal advice: Befriend a liberal arts college graduate using any of the rote procedures for doing so, then explain your position above and request that they “Listen to me describe myself and call out the mistakes I am making in observing myself.” The reason I suggest lib arts grads is that they are the group I find most likely to want to participate in parent-adult interactions (as defined by Eric Berne in the transactional analysis bible Games People Play). I suggest you read that book if you suspect any moral problems in the deliberate manipulation of people to gain a specific advantage; with the right kind of person, the course of action I describe favors them more than you.
Well, my “I” is a bit fuzzier than most people’s, so the benefit to me is more about the benefit to my goals than the benefit to my body/mind locus, if that makes any sense?
And while the internet is a terrible place to find such people, I’m a bit isolated in real life, and tend to cause friendships to detonate spectacularly due to weird emotional resonance issues and generally freaking the hell out of people. So the level of detachment afforded by a forum is probably a better option, in the long run.
“Benefit to you” is defined in exactly the manner in which it is; I have some conscious input into what benefits me, but not conscious fiat.
If you have trouble interacting long-term with people, try a different style: meet people in a strongly structured format and only slowly move outside of that structure. I find gaming clubs useful for that; bridge might be the best case, because it is very much structured even in playing, and is normally a significantly different demographic than I think you are.
What I am suggesting you look for is an amateur counselor. Professional counseling is expensive, ineffective, and scary (ask anyone who’s been threatened with institutionalization). I think that finding one in meatspace is a better return on investment for your time than finding one on the internet.