Just need to ramble

Post Reply New Topic

I fortunately live in Washington, so it's pretty liberal here and I have met quite a few gay/trans people. I'm also glad I live here because I don't think I need surgery to change the gender markers on my ID and everything, and a lot of the jobs I've looked at lately differentiate sex and gender when they mention taking steps against discrimination. Hopefully when I get a job me being trans wont be an issue.



The place my mom wants me to go to for therapy does have someone whose description online says she has a lot of experience working with transgender people. While she doesn't specialize in transgender issues, I was going to try to see if I can go to her because she'll probably be more understanding about my problems relating to that.

When you do find a therapist / mental health professional , might try to approach each issue independently as you possibly can . Might let the therapist not be overwhelmed . And addressing them individually might allow you to be more successful in dealing with each of them . Not every therapist is qualified to deal with all things . Might just consider your first appt. as a interview with your prospective therapist .

Oh, of course. I'm gonna mainly focus on my anxiety when I go to a therapist, at least at first. My anxiety is why I'm even depressed and considering therapy in the first place, so that needs to be addressed before anything.

During. These days of pandemic , there also seems to be a epidemic of Anxiety. These days .

I am just going to use this thread to vent in general, so I dont have to make any other threads. lmao

I've been increasingly lonely lately. Ever since me and my ex-partner stopped talking my last friend has been relatively distant towards me, probably because we were all friends and things are a lot different now. She doesn't really respond to me well and I usually have to start conversations with her. I've mostly stopped trying to talk to her at this point since I feel like I'm annoying her.

I'm getting tired of having no one to properly talk to in general and not knowing how to make new friends. I'm horrible at PMing anyone new after the stuff that happened with my partner, since now I just think people are going to get bored of talking to me and will start ignoring me after awhile, so I avoid PMing people.

I haven't had anyone I can have good, intimate conversations with for a couple years, and it just sucks and makes me more insecure as time goes on. I even joined forums to try to make friends, but on all the forums I've joined I haven't made one friend because I'm too awkward to talk to anyone 1-on-1.

I don't pity myself or anything, but I'm honestly frustrated at myself since everyone I know in real life makes friends so easily, even online friends. I feel like I'm not trying hard enough even though I'm doing what I know I can to make friends.

Young people such as you should never feel your frustrations and stresses are less valid than anyone else's. It's precisely then that it can be real tough to deal with emotions, and this can be worse when we don't fit in society's little square boxes. For those of us who aren't straight or don't fit traditional gender norms, it can cause much loneliness and soul searching.

I am sure you'll find folk on here who will make good friends with you. You're always interesting and never boring. Occasionally we "outgrow" some of our former friends as things change, and it will get easier.

You don't need to try too hard to make friends, as people who like your interactions will gravitate towards you. I think you're well liked here on WP.

Oddly enough this entire rant ( vent) sounds familiar .

I think I am just frustrated because I don't even really remember how to make online friends or how I did it before, so it's hard to figure out how I'm supposed to go about it. I do get that people grow apart all the time, and that friends come and go which is normal and I accept that, though I guess that not being able to have new friends "come" while the rest of my friends are "going" gets irritating sometimes.

I also know that there are people here that like me, which is genuinely cool and I appreciate the people that do, plus I have found that just posting here makes me a lot less lonely. Though I am very awkward and get anxiety if anyone tries to PM me, which makes me avoid PMing people. I need to work on that, but I'm really not sure how to. I haven't properly PM'd anyone "new" since I met my current friend 2-3 years ago, so my 1-on-1 conversation skills with new people are kind of non-existent at this point...

Do you mean that you relate, or that I've posted this before? If it's the latter I probably have since I always feel insecure about this stuff. lol

It means I can relate .! ....... and I do not know if you have posted it before ....... but it looks like something , I might have posted myself in the past . ?

Ohh, well I'm glad that someone can relate to what I said. Sometimes I feel like I'm being dramatic when I talk about things relating to being lonely and having a hard time making friends, so it's nice to know that other people feel the same way.

I've always felt throughout my life like a misfit too and have only ever had a small number of actual friends. I;'m fortunate that although we are currently in different cities, I have a BF who makes an effort to understand me whatever weird stuff I get up to, and who understood better after I was diagnosed on the spectrum.

This is a space where we can talk about virtually anything and will find someone who can relate!

Hooray for good spaces .!

Washington is similar to BC. Hopefully you're close enough to Seattle to be near the LGBT community there. And if you're closer to the border, when covid is over, cross the line just to go immerse yourself in Vancouver's rainbow district.

As for friends, I haven't really had the same problems - and especially not the last 8 years that I've been treating my AS, so can't Fully relate. That said, have (more) chats within threads responding to posts back and forth if you're too anxious/nervous to have pm conversations - you don't seem to have an issue with responding to forum posts. And then when you feel up to it, pm people you feel like chatting with about whatever - and if they don't respond.. well, whatever. Some people are even more pm averse than you are and will never read or respond to them, others do it sporadically, others yet will respond promptly and are happy to have conversations about whatever. My own responsiveness to pm's fluctuates a bit depending on how busy I am or how I'm feeling - but I tend to be pretty good with it.

At 38 I'm nearly a middle aged member of the gay community, but still party with people <25 sooo I'm not "old," and out of touch. Feel free to pm about anything related, or unrelated, anytime. I may or may not reply quickly, but I will reply.

All of what you said is helpful, but I picked this paragraph to quote since it was particularly helpful regarding my current concerns/insecurity with making friends.

I often get discouraged due to not being able to respond that fast to PMs (I need to think out my responses and it takes a bit of time lol), so I feel like I am hindering conversation and being rude. But, being reminded that some people can't respond that fast either and doing so isn't always expected by them makes me feel less discouraged, and less like I'm doing something wrong.

Another couple things to remember:

1. Like forum posts, pm's aren't real time conversations. It's not a phone call where you're expected to respond instantaneously. So, if it takes you minutes, hours, days, or weeks.. whatever.

2. So many Aspies have a common trait of being able to pick up conversations, and friendships, exactly where they left off - even many moons later. One of my real life Aspie friends that I used to hang out with several times a week when we lived in the same neighbourhood I now see may once or twice a year, or sometimes won't see for 2 years, but then when we do see each other it's as if we were just hanging out the day before.

I wouldn't worry too much about responsiveness. At all. These are pm's on an autism forum, not customer service over the phone.