I've been in therapy. I understand the tools and techniques. I've done CBT, DBT, ACT, and others. I've been in residential programs, inpatient, intensive outpatient, regular outpatient, you name it. It can give me a place to vent, get me geared up with tools and excited to start again, a new start, a fresh day, whatever.

But when I go back into society with all my tools from therapy, I still get the same response as always. People don't like me, they never have and they never will. And I got tired of being gaslit by my therapists that my problems were all in my head and I just need to reframe them.

I've had a decade of adulthood to "grow," and I focused intensely on self-help, personal growth, all that stuff. I followed every avenue I could find. And at the end of it all, people only thought it made me self-absorbed. Any social skill I've tried to learn and practice, people sense the unnaturalness and think I'm being a manipulator with some sort of dark psychology techniques. No, it read about "mirroring" and stuff like that in books on interpersonal communication and conflict resolution. Not some narcissist's field manual.

So I have two choices: be awkward and cringe, but genuinely awkward and cringe; or try to be normal, but in a contrived and inauthentic way. I cannot be genuinely normal. That option is not available to me.

Sorry about the traumas you've faced, and I'm glad you could come out on top of it. But you need to recognize that you're the exception rather than the rule. You can't expect everyone to turn out well just because you did.

I spent most of my early twenties as a recluse. I spent my mid-twenties trying to overcome my social anxiety, social ineptitude, and generally trying to integrate into society. I was constantly buffeted by judgement and ill-will, but for years I didn't let it keep me down. I kept trying. I was persistent.

By my mid-to-late twenties, it began to seem insurmountable, my frustrations grew, challenges escalated, and I started cracking. I think there were also some external factors like being doxxed/cybergangstalked, threatened, harassed, gaslit, and all kinds of nastiness. I couldn't prove anything so my doctors called it psychosis.

Anyway, my anxiety reached a crescendo and I began regularly fighting panic attacks. A couple breakdowns later I had my first trip to the mental hospital, which was only more traumatizing. I've been in others since which were more professional, but I'm fairly certain that first one was torturing me (both physically and psychologically) under cover of "treatment."

It was the beginning of a long, slow spiral. I fought to stay afloat all along the way, but things only got worse the more I fought it, like quick sand. It was a long tumble, with plenty of bumps all along the way. I even got arrested at one point for "disorderly conduct" while having an acute psychological episode.

Anyway, several trips to the psych ward later, multiple times in residential therapy, I've given up on thrashing. I don't go in public anymore. I don't even go to the fucking grocery store, say what you will but I get them delivered.

I'll probably never be able to get hired again, even without the apocalyptic nosedive the job market is taking. Even if I could convince someone to hire me, I probably wouldn't be able to hold a job for very long.

I've spiralled too far to try to make a recovery, especially when for every five steps I try to climb, I end up falling thirty. Don't try to give me hope, I don't need that poison.

Yeah, the person you describe in your last paragraph sounds like me. But it's a lot less endearing to be a man and need constant reassurance. Women like that have a chance. I don't.

you will end up still bitter and blaming the world just like she does

I already am, dude.