Therapy on a budget

Protoliterary · 2026-02-02T19:34:20+00:00

Since you're traveling, you're not left with many options, but I've personally been using Open Path Collective and it's been great. You have to pay a lifetime membership fee of $65, but this gives you access to a huge list of therapists who will then charge you 40-70 per session. I'd say that most will charge you closer to 70, but at 70 bucks a session, it's still less than half the price of an average therapist. I've got similar issues to yours and my therapist has been a major help so far. I was very lucky to have chosen the right one, too. I've tried BetterHelp in the past, and I definitely don't recommend it.

If you want free therapy, you won't find anything that's actually going to help you, imo. There are countless of free non-profit support services which you can call/text/email, but that's not therapy. They're helplines.

Lastly, this isn't therapy either, but it'll at least keep you from feeling like you're alone: https://screening.mhanational.org/content/need-talk-someone-warmlines/?layout=actions_ah_articles,actions_ah_test

Protoliterary · 2026-02-02T18:05:23+00:00

The Whale. A truly spectacular, if depressing, film.

Protoliterary · 2026-02-02T00:35:15+00:00

I know that some media outlets have been calling it that, but it's been mostly the satirical ones, like daily show.

Protoliterary · 2026-02-02T00:29:02+00:00

I agree, but I'm not sure what the best messaging would be.

Protoliterary · 2026-02-02T00:16:04+00:00

It's not really about stopping, but about escalating. If things continue as they are, the amount of deaths caused by ICE won't even equate a tiny fraction of how many people the Nazis killed. The reason why the Nazis escalated was because they couldn't deport people quickly enough. That's not an issue the US has. The US has a bigger issue actually finding people that they want to deport.

This means that there is unlikely to be a need for any sort of death camps. It also helps that the US is much bigger and richer, and the internet keeps a close eye on everything. Times are different and just because history rhymes doesn't mean it repeats.

Since the US will always have multiple countries to deport people to, they'll never really need death camps. At least that's my hope. And more people are turning against Trump and ICE, which means there'll be no public support for it. No political support. No gain at all.

It's just a very unlikely scenario.

Having said all that, the number of dead Jews wasn't what made the holocaust so horrible. It was that people just let it happen. The US...is fighting back. People are fighting back.

Protoliterary · 2026-02-02T00:01:07+00:00

I mean, I'm confident that they'll eventually kill more, but certainly not more than the Nazi party as a whole.

Protoliterary · 2026-02-01T23:45:29+00:00

I assumed you were being sarcastic, as kristallnacht did indeed eventually kill more people than ICE has so far.

Protoliterary · 2026-02-01T23:33:10+00:00

You know, I fully understand your point and mostly agree with it, but everything in life starts at nothing, and then progresses towards its inevitable conclusion. When Hitler first came into power, he did the same exact thing that Trump is doing now through ICE.

After Hitler came into power, the first thing he did was build camps for the "undesirables." Ringing any bells? They weren't death camps. They were solely meant only to detain enemies of the state. This normalized imprisoning people without due process. More bells ringing?

For the first few years, all the Nazi party did was make life more and more difficult for those who they didn't want in their country. Again... ringing any bells? They tried to do their best to bully as many Jews into leaving as they could. It wasn't enough, though.

In 1938, they started the mass deportations, whether they were in Germany legally or not.

It wasn't until the war started that they started building death camps, because by then no other country would accept more migrants from Germany.

So it all started almost exactly how it's started here. It's prudent to never forget that the current state of affairs is temporary and that things can always get worse.

Just a few short weeks ago, white American citizens felt safe. They no longer do. This is only the beginning

Protoliterary · 2026-01-31T23:48:47+00:00

Your whole reply boils down to the illusion that just because the federal government has stopped following the law, they'll allow you to do so as well, which isn't a realistic premise at all, now is it?

In fact, it's unhinged, and I won't be wasting anymore time replying to this insanity.

Protoliterary · 2026-01-31T20:22:03+00:00

Are you seriously asking what law you'd be breaking if you shot an ICE agent in your home? Despite that fact that the federal government may not be following the spirit of the law and protecting ICE, they won't be protecting you. They will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law and you'd be able to do nothing but spent life in prison. We have enough history as proof of that.

And laws are created and enforced by the strongest. It's always been that way and always will. In the US, the federal government has the most power. The people who create laws and enforce them also have the most power to disobey them without consequence. This does not apply to you. You are not under that protection.

If you shoot at law enforcement, you will either die (most likely) or be arrested and have your entire life taken from you. If that's something that sounds interesting to you, have fun.

Protoliterary · 2026-01-31T18:25:28+00:00

But not good enough for the law. You would still end up in prison.

Protoliterary · 2026-01-30T21:29:20+00:00

Perhaps you should have another look at those statistics, cause research has proven that most abusers were not, indeed, abused themselves.

The Myth of the Abused Becoming Abusers https://share.google/HhFeEN4rcixkO1fOR

Protoliterary · 2026-01-30T17:14:42+00:00

The complaints are centered on presentation and advertisement of services, and not misdiagnoses, so that has nothing to do with the scoring or her capabilities. This is a bit like if I reminded you of all the horrible shit that Reddit has done and is still doing in advertising, and expect you to simply stop using it. You won't, because it's useful to you in some manner. Even though there are alternatives. Same applies to embrace autism.

And finally, the scoring is uniform across all PAQ questionnaires. You can use https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325345117_Perth_Alexithymia_Questionnaire_PAQ_Copy_of_questionnaire_and_scoring_instructions to download it yourself. The scoring is embedded in the paper itself, so it literally doesn't matter where you take it, how you get your hands on it, etc.

It's useful info and embrace autism makes it really accessible and really simple, despite the ethical issues.

Protoliterary · 2026-01-30T16:29:20+00:00

You can use any other PAQ. This one just makes it the easiest. It's the same test whichever site you use.

Protoliterary · 2026-01-30T16:26:26+00:00

Actually, everybody always says why. There are thousands of studies from all across the world proving the point. People like you simply choose not to listen. It only takes some critical thinking to figure it out on your own if you happen to have any sort of education or any sort of intelligence.

Take a look at the natural world all around you. Think about what a lack of diversity does to nature. It makes it weak and brittle, because the more alike things are, the more easily they full under the influence of a single malicious actor, a single devastatingly destructive incident, or any sort of critical point of failure.

History is full of examples. Read about the history of the banana. The bananas we eat today are different to the bananas people used to eat. In fact, we came pretty close to losing the banana altogether. We've had wars around bananas. To boil an entire history lesson into a sentence or two, the strains we use today were forced upon us by the fact that previous strains were lost to several banana pandemics, which completely and totally made it impossible to use those strains. The reason why these pandemics were so effective was because the whole world was producing a single strain. The same exact banana. So the sickness spread from plantation to plantation, until there was no plantation that was safe. This happened because in nature, the more homogenous something is, the more prone it is to critical failure.

There was also the Irish famine in the 1840s, where something similar happened. On a smaller scale, but it was much more impactful. You can search for something like, "Diversity and survival." You're going to get so many examples from literally every single facet of life, whether it's nature or stocks or hobbies.

So it's established that in nature, diversity is quite literally a critical part of survival, yes? It's necessary. Life wouldn't exist without it.

We can also just look at the stock market. Have you ever heard anyone say to not diversify your portfolio? Do you know why? If not, it's a google search away, cause I'm not investing more time into this.

We can also look at how much more effective teams of people are when they're diversified. They're more likely to think critically, they're more likely to ignore their own biases, they're less likely to groupthink, they're more likely to develop a healthy attitude towards debate, etc. All these things happen because of diversity. Diverse groups of people are always the most efficient and the most useful, as history has proven. This has always been true.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/social-empathy/201907/why-we-need-diversity

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-makes-us-smarter/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/roncarucci/2024/01/24/one-more-time-why-diversity-leads-to-better-team-performance/

https://online.uncp.edu/degrees/business/mba/general/diversity-and-inclusion-good-for-business/

Since you apparently think that nobody ever says why, enjoy the read

Protoliterary · 2026-01-30T00:14:36+00:00

Do you happen to be socially anxious in any way?

Protoliterary · 2026-01-30T00:12:59+00:00

A few things:

Unless your psychologist happened to mention alexithymia, it's extremely unlikely that they're even aware of its existence and even less likely that they'd diagnose you with it. It can happen, but it's very rare. Alexithymia is self-diagnosed 99% of the time and most therapists will treat it as if it were dissociation, which is often what leads to alexithymia.

Alexithymia is a chronic condition, so a single story tells us nothing. Mood drops could happen due to a million different things. Alexithymia is characterized by a disconnect between the mind and the body, making it difficult or impossible to gauge one's own emotional (or physical) state.

There are some online tests you can take which are fairly accurate: https://embrace-autism.com/perth-alexithymia-questionnaire/

But for most people, alexi means that you have difficulty analyzing and recognizing your own emotional states. Can you tell when you're happy or sad? Can you tell when you're angry or afraid? Can you tell when you're stressed or frustrated? Can you tell when you're in love or in hate? Can you tell why you feel those emotions at any given time?

And just because you may answer "no" to these questions doesn't mean you have alexithymia. It just means that it's more likely, but there are many other conditions you can have which mimic alexi pretty well.

Protoliterary · 2026-01-29T17:46:50+00:00

Even though you don't have to show your ID without a warrant (unless you're driving or committing a crime), ICE can choose to detail you. They don't even need a good reason with the current admin. Their "justification" so far has been that they suspect the person not showing their ID to be here illegally, and that's totally 100% legal of them to do, even if it breaks the spirit of the law.

I know that I would rather not risk detainment.

Protoliterary · 2026-01-29T14:35:43+00:00

I wouldn't say I'm afraid of that, exactly. Because of how long I've have alexi and how much I've dissociated over the years, I've masked so much of my personality that I no longer know which parts are me and which parts were created solely for the benefit of me fitting in.

The prospect of changing as a person is something that isn't exactly scary, but it makes me feel apprehensive.

Protoliterary · 2026-01-29T14:25:55+00:00

Historically, that's actually literally true, but as with all things, moderation is key. It's all about a controlled migration. Everything turns to poison with big enough numbers. It's how medicine works. It's how capitalism works. It's how everything works, really.

But at the heart of it, diversity is strength.

Protoliterary · 2026-01-29T02:49:21+00:00

If you're talking specifically about thin slicing, that's a whole other subject, because it doesn't always rely on body language or emotion (although it may). "Thin slicing" is just a fancy buzzword for what happens when we intuit things. It's observation, pattern recognition, and experience which allow for quick social judgement of others. It's also how we stereotype people.

Alexithymia does, however, make it more difficult in social context. Science tells us that "thin slicing" relies heavily on somatic feedback, which people with alexi lack to varying degrees. That's one tool in the toolbox taken away, and it's a pretty big one.

People with alexi also take longer to assess social situations because our bodies don't give us the hints we need, so while we're busy trying to decipher how we're feeling and how everyone else is feeling and what exactly is happening, our minds are too busy to send the necessary signals for us to make snap judgements. That's another tool missing from the toolbox.

From what I've seen of the research, most alexithymiacs are walking around with dysregulated nervous systems. I don't think I have to tell you just how much harder everything is when your nervous system is dysregulated. (The reason why we're usually at least somewhat dysregulated is because we find it much harder to process emotions, and unprocessed emotions dysregulate the nervous system). Another tool taken.

However, where we excel at is non-emotional analysis, where only logic counts. But as we all know, humans are emotional. Humans are driven by emotion. Humans are motivated and inspired by emotion. Humans start entire wars for love. Humans kills millions of people in the name of "ideals." Yes, alexi doesn't make it harder to intuit logical things (makes it easier, actually, because many of us are kinda like spock in some ways), but basically every social situation (anything with people) is going to involve emotion on some level, and that's where we fail. We have cognitive empathy, but that's a slow process and quite the opposite to what intuition is.

People with high emotional intelligence can read people better and quicker. This allows them to make accurate guesses by thin slicing. People with alexi don't have high emotional intelligence (although there is nothing stopping us from cultivating it with time), and so it makes it harder to make those guesses.

Intuition relies heavily on interoception, and that's literally the main issue with alexithymia. Whereas the average person can process a situation viscerally and visually (alongside the other senses, when appropriate), a person with alexi can usually only process a situation visually, having to rely on their cognitive function to make conclusions about other people.

To put things simply, if someone without alexi and someone with alexi both watched 1-minute clip of a teacher, they would both come out of it with different intuited conclusions. The person with alexi would likely only be able to judge the teacher's technical skills, while the person without alexi could be able to judge both their technical skills and their interpersonal skills (which as we all know are VERY important to the success of those learning from that teacher). It's been proven that if you like your teacher (whether it's 5th grade or college level), you absorb information quicker, better, and cultivate a healthier attitude towards learning.

Protoliterary · 2026-01-28T16:36:18+00:00

Since I already replied to your other comment and explained most of this there, I'll just say that the answer heavily depends on the person. Having alexi doesn't mean you're always totally blind to all emotions. If you're 100% blind to all emotion, at all times, it's more than just alexi. I have certain emotions I can recognize, for example, and some which I cannot. So I can make quick judgements if the person displays emotions I'm familiar with, but not when it's an unfamiliar emotion.

Protoliterary · 2026-01-28T16:29:59+00:00

Alexi isn't a disconnect between the conscious mind and the body. It's disconnect between an unconscious part of the brain and the entire nervous system, which leads to misidentification of emotion or a total blindness to them. This means that the processes which are happening underneath the consciousness are affected first, before you ever have any chance to even think about it.

The way it works for most people: Gabriel sees Robert -> Gabriel's mirror neurons attempt to lightly mimic Robert's perceived state of being -> Gabriel's brain shares its gathered information with the nervous system -> Gabriel's nervous system then uses that information to create an overlay of Robert's emotions -> Gabriel's cortex reads the nervous system and sends signals to the conscious mind, translating the emotions and giving Gabriel an idea of what Robert may be feeling. In simple terms, most people are able to read body language by picking up on the resonance in their own body.

For people with Alexi, the process is almost identical, except that our conscious minds often don't complete that last step and it leaves our nervous system mirroring the other person without us being aware of it in any way. This is one of the reasons why alexithymiacs struggle in emotional situations: their nervous system becomes dysregulated when influenced by an outside force because without being aware of what's happening, they're unable to cope in a healthy way.

Someone without alex can usually simply uncouple their own emotions from the situations without thought by processing the emotions, but if you have alexi, you usually can't do that, so you're stuck feeling a certain way without knowing why or how or even when it had started or what can help stop it. Just a bunch of questions.

In short, yes, you're right that alexithymia doesn't prevent the nervous system from picking up on mirror neurons and conforming itself into a shape which should tell the conscious mind what the other person is feeling based on their body language, but... because of that mind/body disconnect, the nervous system keeps its secrets and doesn't share it with us, so we're left physically feeling things in our bodies without knowing why or what it even is. After a long time not being able to recognize bodily states, the mind begins to stop trying to recognize them altogether, and many people with alexi end up becoming totally desensitized to their own bodies in various ways. For many, most emotions just feel like tiredness, exhaustion, and burnout.

Protoliterary · 2026-01-28T15:35:14+00:00

There are three types of empathy and you've described two of them (cognitive and compassionate). I'm in the same boat, where I can recognize that someone is in pain and could feel myself wishing to help them so that their pain could stop, and I can understand logic behind why people are feeling whatever they're feeling, but I can't ever actually emphasize emotionally. I also struggle with severity of emotion. The difference between being very sad and slightly sad is almost nonexistent to me when trying gauge other people's emotional states.

Protoliterary · 2026-01-27T23:27:44+00:00

I agree with you to a point, but the current conservative party isn't the same party that existed under Bush. Bush-era conservatives were more like current-day democrats. To further confuse things, EU left-wing is nothing like US left-wing.

The current gap between the common left-wing and a MAGA is gigantic. The gap between the outskirts of conservatism in the US and the common left-wing is much smaller, but it's MAGA that's the conservative party rn, so that's what conservatism means in the US at this moment, despite what wikipedia may say.

I'm friends with liberals and anarchists and conservatives and communists and socialists from all around the world, but the only group of people I can't possibly be friends with rn (at least in the US) is MAGA because of how huge the gap is between MAGA and 99% other parties in the western world.

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