Hey, mate! I'm really wondering why do you still live with your parents? I mean it seems like a no-brainer call to move out of them, and you don't even have it on your long-term-goal list.

I know, it's just anxiety, and thinking about the effort required to move all my stuff is overwhelming.

I actually have been looking at apartments on craigslist and the zillow app the last few days. I have a friend who offered to help me move a few weeks ago, so I have some more confidence about it now.

Your case with parents reminds me a famous metaphor. You know, a frog and a boil. If you'll try to put a frog into a boiling water it will jump away immediately. Or, put the frog in water, then heat the water gradually and the frog will be boiled alive without making any efforts to escape.

If I were you, I would have left the house holding a single bag right after I got enough money to pay 2 months of rent. Without breaking your relationship, because you'll have lots of regrets about it. I would have said to my parents that I'll be away for a week or two as for start because I don't want to have the door clothed. You know, your parent's house is opened for you forever. I would prefer not having the pressure on me just in case something gone wrong. I can remember lots of mates who were suffering from hunger without a roof over their heads not willing to come back home broken. Yes, I was hanging around with homeless people a couple of months ;-). And I had issues with my parents too, most of people had.

Sorry if I got it all wrong or sound somehow dominant. I don't feel any superposition or something, it's just me not being that kind of sweet person and lots of memories related to my own experience. I'm still really kind deep inside.

I'm enjoying reading about your progress here and in a couple of other threads, and I agree with your strategy of taking small manageable steps that challenge your comfort zone without seeming overwhelming. Remember the adage: a frog placed in a pot of water that is gradually heated will eventually jump out, since thermoregulation by changing location is a fundamentally necessary survival strategy for frogs and other ectotherms. I also thought your account of assertiveness was A+.

I think I like my therapist too much. I always have a plan to talk about the dark **** and the emotionl spiral I'm always on. But when I walk into her office I feel all warm and fuzzy because she's so nice. We end up talking about some lame **** like how I can improve my self esteem or whatever, which is what happened again today. Then I have no one to talk to about what's really bothering me and causing me tons of pain.

I'm drinking alcohol tonight for the first time in 3 years. I've been fantasizing about getting drunk for so long. I drank 1 beer and I feel half drunk. I'd always been a lightweight but wow, I guess that's what happens when it's been that long.

Bumping this because I've recently read two books that have been usefull to me for improving my communication game:

The Art Of People

Not Nice

When my dead rotting body gets eaten by maggots it will be as natural and inevitable as a leaf falling off a tree in autumn. It's a comforting and liberating thought.

Every being deserves to be exactly where they are right now, doing what they are doing, and interacting in the way they are interacting with everyone around them. We are all in the correct place in the correct time with the correct surroundings. Resistance to reality creates suffering.

The only Higher Power I believe in is hate.

Some people like to talk about "The Universe" as if it were a conscious being. It's like God for people who think religion is uncool. They like to attribute random coincidences and obstacles as signs from The Universe. For example "this _____ happening is a sign from the universe that I should/shouldn't be doing _____."

This belief in The Universe isn't wrong imo. Where people go wrong is in their assumption that The Universe is guiding them in the right direction, and thus they should obey The Universe's signals. What people need to realize is that The Universe hates you, me and everyone. Hate is the only energy in The Universe. The Universe's job is to guide you in the wrong direction, to prevent you from doing what will make you happier and suffer less. The Universe is your enemy. When The Universe Presents you with an obstacle to something you planned to do, it is not a signal to stop, it's a signal that this is a MORE important task than you had originally thought. The more obstacles and seemingly random signals The Universe gives you to stop, the more important it is for you to go. And vice versa.

You must hate The Universe and every being in it. Embrace the hate, it's the only path to the truth.

I'd like to become invisible. Not literally. I mean unfindable, undoxable, ID theft-proof. And no I will not be living in a shack in the woods. I want to try to do this living a semi-normal life in a major city.

Meta-Strategy

This will be a long and complicated process. I'm sure I'll make mistakes along the way. I'm going to break down my strategies into 7 sub-strategies.

Device strategy
Data security and backup strategy
Email strategy
Phone number strategy
Name strategy
Physical address strategy
Consumer/financial strategy

Some of the techniques I employ will cover more than one of these categories, but I think it's a good way to organize my thoughts and plans.

For every category there are 3 basic objectives:

Information removal (easy but takes time and effort)
Information protection (complicated, and takes time, effort, and money)
Disinformation (the fun part)

Email Strategy

I'll talk about this first because it's probably the easiest of the 7 sub-strategies and the one I'm working on first.

The goal is to make it as difficult as possible for an email account to get compromised, and if it does, minimize the damage that could be done.

Over the past 5-10 years I've used a relatively normal email strategy, which is to have 6 or 7 gmail accounts. 1 for work, 1 to communicate with family, one for social media/forums, 1 for torrent sites, 1-2 more for random junk. This needs to change.

Having lots of accounts all tied to the same email address, especially sensitive ones like financial accounts, creates a large single point of failure. If one email account is compromised, the attacker has the ability to change passwords on checking acounts, brokerage accounts, paypal, credit cards, etc, and gain a lot of information about recent activity on those accounts.

New strategy is to use a different email address for every single account. The only exception would be the ones I give out to people at work, and the one I give out to family.

Most of my accounts have been switched from gmail to ProtonMail, Tutanota, Fastmail, or Mailfence accounts. Gmail is not free. It's just that we pay for gmail with our personal data rather than money. I'd rather pay with money. I also use a VPN and might want to login from different IP addresses sometimes, and gmail freaks out about this. Gmail has tight security though, I'll give them that. I'm more likely to lock myself out of a gmail account than for it to get compromised, assuming the password is good and unique.

The problem with doing this is of course the inconvenience of having to log in/out of a bazillion email accounts to check them. I think what I'll do is use a premium Proton account with 50 aliases for most non-sensitive accounts. This creates a single point of failure problem, but these won't be accounts anyone could do a lot of damage with. I'll never give out the "main" address I use to login with. The purpose of that is to keep both login credentials (login name + password) secret.

When someone wants to get into an account, it usually requires two credentials: a username and password. For an email account, we normally give out half of our login credentials to everyone with an internet connection. That means everyone is instantly 50% of the way towards hacking your account. If both login credentials are never given out to anyone either online or irl, an attacker is starting from scratch.

Ideally, all accounts would never have the login name be the same as the username for that site, or the email address for an email account.

I'll use free stand alone Proton accounts for sensitive things like financial accounts. I won't need to check those very often so it's not a big inconvenience.

When I run out of Proton accounts, I'll start using Fastmail or Tutanota. Fastmail is the cheapest and allows hundreds of aliases, and they have lots of other fetures like calendars and whatever. The problem is some sites don't want to accept Fastmail when signing up or changing the email address on file. Tutanota offers 20 aliases for about twice the price of Fastmail.

Email credentials are organized in my Keepass database into 5 different folders:

fresh
sensitive
non-sensitive
junk
alias

Fresh means email accounts that I've created and haven't used for anything yet. They're on the shelf ready to go. Right now there's 24 in the fresh folder, mostly Proton and Tutanota.

Sensitive is email addresses for accounts that are linked to my real identity. Any account that I've given my real name, address, SSN. These are never used for more than 1 account. Right now there's 17, but I still have a few sensitive accounts using gmail addresses.

Non-sensitive is email addresses for accounts that don't have any of my real info, but that would still suck if they got compromised.

Junk is email addresses for accounts that I don't care if they get compromised. I'll try to use 33mail for most of these.

Alias is for email accounts of aliases, used for the purpose of disinformation. I've created 3 aliases so far. Creating aliases gets very complicated very quickly. More on this later.

Please let me know if you see any flaws here.

Another email provider I'm considering is Kolabnow. I emailed customer service and they said they allow unlimited aliases on their paid accounts, which start at about $55/year. Like Proton, they're based in Switzerland.

One reason why I'd like to have plenty of fresh email accounts and/or aliases ready to use is if one provider has a data breach, or goes busto, or has a massive DDOS attack or something. I could switch to another provider much more easily.

Paypal Experiment

If you have a Paypal account, Paypal will give out your personal info to over 600 other companies.

Every entry for every account in my Keepass database has all the real info, if any, I've given out to that site/company. I like to keep track of who has what on me. Paypal has my real name, real SSN, 2 maybe 3 previous real addresses, a phone number, an email, and a credit card. This is of course terrible for my privacy and security, but I've had this account since long before I realized the risks of giving out that info.

However, maybe I can use this to my advantage for disinformation. Yesterday I changed my email addess on my Paypal account. I will not give out that email address to any other site. I'm curious to see if/when that email address will appear in other databases. I've set a google alert for that email address, and I'll check on it through other sources periodically and report back.

What I'd like to have happen eventually is for a typical OSINT search for my real name to return dozens if not hundreds of different email addresses, phone numbers, and mailing addresses. And vice versa: a search for my real address returning hundreds of different names, a search for any of my phone numbers returning hundreds of names and addresses, you get the idea. SSN disinformation would be nice too, but I need to tread lightly with that, as I'd prefer not to commit any federal crimes.

Krunic,

Hope you get thru Christmas ok. Do not engage much, have some treats and the day will be over before you know it.

Happy Christmas,

Josie

Thanks for the well wishes Josie. I survived.

Early last summer I decided to start dating. Downloaded Tinder and Bumble. I thought it might be nice to try being normal. Make it so that someone would notice if I died.

I have a friend Diana, she's been married for about 10 years. She's very empathetic, she and her husband go to couples therapy and put a lot of work into their relationship. We go running in the park once in a while. One day as we were running I asked her if she would take some pictures of me, to use for my new dating profiles. Her eyes lit up like a little kid on Christmas morning. She took a few dozen pics of me in various poses and lighting angles. She was so excited for me. I used one of the pics she took and two more that I took myself in my apartment wearing some nicer clothes.

I swiped and swiped for 2 or 3 days. I got a few matches. I chatted with a 38 year old woman, and setup a date for brunch at a restaurant we both had been to before and really liked. The "date" was fine and pleasant. I had pancakes and she had quiche. We made polite small talk for about 45 minutes. She has 2 kids, divorced, something something work something something family background something something traveling. I don't recall exactly what messages were exchanged the next day but the gist of it was she said she didn't feel like she had time for more dating right now. Ok. I didn't particularly like her all that much, I just wanted to get some more practice interacting with humans in a dating context.

When I talked to my therapist about the date, I told her I felt like I couldn't do anything other than make polite small talk. It wasn't the first time I've strategically avoided steering a conversation towards any topic involving past relationships or anything to do with romance or sex. I couldn't figure out why that is. I've also had a history of feeling threatened whenever I get the sense that someone is flirting with me, like a primitive fight/flight/freeze response. This has happened 3 times in the past. I've always responded by being a total jerk to them until they leave me alone. It works for me.

This summer I started listening to a podcast called Sex With Emily. It's about sex and relationship stuff, as the name implies. The hosts are very open and positive about all things related to sex. I'm sitting here thinking this is all bull****. It can't be real. How can people just talk about sex like that? Where's the darkness, the trauma, the shame, the horrible disturbing memories, thoughts, and feelings that flood the mind whenever one so much as hears the word sex?

Then a few days ago it hit me: maybe normals actually do think of sex as just a fun positive thing. Maybe they don't immediately go through a mental Rolodex of horrible gross shameful memories whenever they so much as hear the word sex.

I uninstalled the dating apps about a week after the date. I can't deal with the ****storm of negative thoughts/memories/emotions that comes with it, even when it's only polite small talk.

Maybe I'll be a relationship person in the next life. For the remainder of this one I'll continue the quest to find a reason to live that doesn't directly involve other people.

I think with age and experience those negative thoughts about sex lessen.

I never understood shopping online for dates. You’re supposed to just magically have feelings for the stranger in front of you? Glad you cancelled.

Get a male therapist

I think online dating could work out fine for you, you seem to approach it the right way wrt practicing interaction, it does literally take practice though (meaning more then once).

Josie,
Ime online dating isnt that different from old school dating, it isnt that strange to develop feelings after s date or two, whether you met hanging out at a friends birthday or went drinking a few beers together makes hardly any difference. I may be slightly biased after having a child and being married with one of my online dates though.

I suppose different strokes for different folks. The very idea of it makes my social anxiety go through the roof.

How?

As opposed to what, magically having feelings for a random person in a bar, or at work?

I'm socially ******ed, I need the social context clearly defined, and I need 1-on-1 interactions only. I can manage online dating, I can't navigate meeting randoms out in the wild.

Could you elaborate?

I chose a female therapist because it's much easier for me to talk to women than men.

Ime the lessening is in part triggered by having more better sex, if that doesnt happen the experiences can become more of a burden due to replaying/regretting, especially if you have a hard time letting go.



Exactly my point about online dating, you also have little to nothing to lose which can basically mean your experiences are sort of in vivo experiences.

What I mean is how do I date and have sex if the mere thought of dating or having sex floods my mind with negative thoughts/emotions/memories that make me want to jump out of my own skin or lay down on some train tracks? I've only had the desire for dating or having sex for about 1.5 years.

I'm with Yak. I think continuing to online date while also continuing therapy is the way to go. Getting out of comfort zones is excellent for personal growth and breaking past patterns. You sound like you would like a relationship but it's going to involve a few hurdles that most don't have to experience. All people have hurdles with relationships, they are just different for each person/relationship. Don't give up.

Edit: I posted before reading the last post. If it's making you feel suicidal a break is probably for the best. Hopefully therapy will give you some breakthroughs. Do the apps give an option for looking for friends? Meeting new women without expectations on either side might be easier for you.

How? Positive sexual experiences maybe not replace them, but they lessen their strength/overwhelmingness.

I’m socially ******ed too but u still have to go out there. You’ll meet the same people if u frequent the same areas and eventually you’ll see someone you’re attracted to. Once you are attracted, then u focus on your target.

Attraction/passion is what will regress those bad experiences. When u feel that attraction your body will want what it wants even though there is fear.

The fact that you’re interested in having sex means you’re making progress, as is the fact that you can talk to women online.

Men are visual creatures so it’s easier and more organic to be attracted to women irl imo but hey, potato/potahto.