DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m an almost 24-year-old Indian-American virgin guy with zero dating experience. Like a good portion of guys within my ethnic group, I pursued an education in a STEM field, which as you might know, is a very demanding time commitment and leaves little in the way for time for socialization. I’m doing a master’s degree, working full time as a web developer, and work out 6-7 times a week. As you can imagine, I don’t have a lot of time for social events, but lately, I don’t know why I should even bother.��There’s been a disturbing shift in the perception of Indians and the Indian diaspora online. Up until about the mid 2010s, Indians in western countries were largely seen as relatively harmless nerds and the men were desexualized, while the women were fetishized to a degree. If this sounds familiar, this is a similar experience many East Asians have experienced as well. While not flattering, this perception of Indians has taken a dramatic turn for the worst. Indians are now being perceived as rapists, pedophiles, unhygienic, scammers, etc. The men have gone from being desexualized to being straight up demonized. And this perception is pervasive all throughout social media, with trends like the “What race would you not date” trend being popular a couple years back, to AI-generated racist videos going viral recently. Hell, even on election night in 2024, there were STILL comments calling Indian men ugly going viral at the same time on X. It may be tempting to use the “social media is not real life” refrain, but history shows that there is a link between media portrayals and real-life violence. In Canada, the recent spike of hate led to a 143% increase in hate crimes against Indian-origin people. This is worsened by the fact that there is seemingly very little pushback on the racism, with justifications ranging from, “they deserve it”, to “it’s the culture, not the race”. The latter argument is especially problematic and insidious because they assume Indian-origin people born and raised in western countries follow this purported pro-rape Indian culture via the perpetual foreigner effect. I’m not saying there isn’t a misogyny problem in India, but if we’re being honest, most people online don’t actually care about Indian women and are just using the social problem to justify racism.��All of this has had disastrous consequences on my attempts to socialize, let alone date. The stereotype of the desexualized Indian nerd was hard enough to fight on its own, but the potential rapist stereotype is infinitely worse, and anyone who’s experienced racial discrimination knows this well. Unfortunately, people are usually not out there wearing their racist beliefs on their sleeve on dating apps, speed dating/friending events, or public spaces. So I reasonably keep my guard up a lot, and have avoided social situations as much as possible, despite feeling very lonely simultaneously.

They Don’t See The Real Me

DEAR THEY DON’T SEE THE REAL ME: Alright, let me lead off with something obvious here: I’m a middle-aged white guy. My world-view and life experiences are shaped by that.  I’m not going to have the same perspective or experiences or live through the same sort of background radiation of someone who’s South Asian, so there’re always be things that I won’t have experienced or nuances that I’m not going to be familiar with. All of which is to say: there will probably be things I miss simply because I don’t see or experience them first hand and the way I travel through the world is going to be informed by the relative bubble of privilege I experience as a white guy so my advice should be taken with all due amounts of salt and skepticism. 

Now for your letter: you seem to have left off an actual question at the end, so I don’t know what, precisely you’re hoping to hear about other than just the general frustration of, well, everything. So let’s talk about that for a moment.

There’re a few different things happening in your letter that I think should be addressed. The first is, simply: you’re not exactly going out and socializing much to begin with. This is understandable: you’re pursuing a post-graduate degree while also working full time and also spending a lot of time at the gym. That’s all well and good, but it brings up an important question: are you sure you have the available time to actually date and maintain a relationship?

This isn’t an idle question. A lot of folks, especially guys who’ve never dated before, have never really thought about what dating someone would entail on a practical level, nor how their lives would change if they were in a relationship. I don’t mean in the sense of “I’ll feel a newfound sense of self-respect and confidence and people won’t look at me with pity”, but in the sense of “what changes are you going to make to fit another person in your life?” Many times, they picture their lives as either being mostly the same but with the knowledge that there’s an attractive person around, or that there’s magically more time in the day to spend with them.

Unfortunately, that’s not how this works. We all only have 24 hours in the day, and everything we do comes with an opportunity cost. If we want to slot something else in, that’s going to come at the expense of time spent doing something else – including sleep, relaxation, hobbies or just farting around on the Internet. Going out and meeting people, going on dates and all the rest takes time. Even if you try to streamline things by, say, using dating apps instead of going to social events, you still have to factor in actually meeting people in person and going out on dates. All of that is going to require time to come from somewhere else. If you’re determined to date, you’re going to have to figure out where that time is going to come from. You’re going to have to decide where you have flexibility to shift priorities and how you will free up time for keeping up your relationship. Something’s gonna have to give.

Or you may decide that right now is not a good time for you to try to meet people and resolve to kick that particular can down the road a bit. This is an entirely legitimate and understandable choice to make! It doesn’t do any good to try to meet the woman of your dreams if doing so means barreling into exhaustion or burnout. While I understand both the desire to want to date and the social pressure that makes “find a girlfriend” feel urgent, it’s very reasonable to decide that you want to put that on pause until your schedule’s a lot more flexible and the demands on your time (and your brain and body) are less intense. Hustle culture and grindset be damned, you don’t do yourself any good by burning the candle at both ends. Even under the best of circumstances, all you do is put the consequences on credit, to be paid out of your future self’s health and well-being.

So the first thing you should really consider is whether you can manage some work-life balance, or if that needs to wait until later.

(And considering the demands that grad school made of friends and family, even when they weren’t also working 40+ hour jobs, I think waiting until you complete your Masters’ isn’t the worst idea in the world.)

But let’s talk about complicating factors, like racism and stereotypes about South Asian people and South Asian men in particular. I won’t lie: you’ve got some serious challenges here. You’re right, there’s a lot of racism directed at Eastern and South Asian men of all stripes; even the model-minority stereotype is a form of soft bigotry that robs people of their individuality and humanity and reduces them into a defined set of traits and expectations. And there is indeed a lot of stereotypes that treat South Asian and East Asian men as sexless and effete, if not bumbling and foolish or all of the above. It’s also very deliberate; it started as a campaign of social emasculation against Chinese men and spread outward from there. That’s all real and legitimate.

So too is the rise of racist rhetoric and incidents of violence. The right wing in the US has embraced Nazi wanna-be’s with their whole heart and made hating anyone who’s not the right kind of white a policy platform. These are all very real concerns that you and people like you have to deal with.

I can’t speak to the increase in a popular view that all Indian men are rapists, in no small part because I quite literally never see this come up, anywhere. I’m online to frankly a stupid degree and I do my best to follow a fairly diverse group of voices people and while I’ve seen things about sexual assault in India, I certainly haven’t seen it being carried over into popular stereotypes of South Asian men in general and not in the US specifically. 

Now some of this is easily explained by the balkanized nature of social media, and I’m not following folks who are deep into those circles. But that actually serves as a handy segue for my next point…

Your letter runs straight into one of the things I can’t emphasize enough: social media in general and Twitter in particular isn’t real life. Yeah, I know you brought it up already in order to dismiss the idea, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s true. It wasn’t real life before Elon Musk took it over, but it’s especially not real life now that it’s a Nazi bar full of algorithmically boosted hate. While I have no doubt that you’re seeing this all over your feed, I think you’re hitting the same issue a lot of folks do: you’re mistaking frequency and volume for ubiquity.

Any social media app with an algorithmic feed – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, etc. – prioritizes content that gets engagement, regardless of the kind of engagement. AI-generated brainrot reels on Instagram may get shared around with “look at this s--t”, but it’s still getting shared. TikTok ragebait clips about dating get passed around by folks either asking “is this true” or “it’s so over”, but the algo doesn’t care because any engagement still counts. And nothing gets engagement like hate and racism. The racists and bigots retweet it in support and people quote-tweet to dunk on it but it still means that it’s getting shared all over the place. Doubly so on Twitter where there’s financial incentive to post the most inflammatory s--t people can come up with.

All of this is understandably demoralizing, and it’s intended to be. That’s exactly what these chuds want. It’s both the desired result but also their sales pitch. Pick Up Artists want incels to think women will hate them unless they buy their courses.  Masculinity grifters want you to think that manhood is under attack, vitally important but also incredibly fragile and you have to be on your guard at all times. Race-baiting f--kheads want folks to believe that folks from the global south are weak and pitiful but also degenerates and cunning, organized schemers who plot to take over entire cities or countries. If you’re not feeling weak and put upon, you’re not going to buy their bulls--t – both literally and figuratively.

But where this intersects with your concerns, specifically, is how you’re treating ragebait posts as real life and letting it restrict you now before you’ve done… well, pretty much anything. And a lot of it is because I think it’s likely that you’ve been mainlining this and confusing volume for ubiquity. This is something that happens to everyone; when you see the same thing being shared over and over or people saying similar things constantly with very little pushback or challenge, it’s all too easy to assume that everyone thinks this way or that this is totally normal and taken as gospel. I mean, right now, intelligent people are going around insisting that just hearing about a particularly stupid variation of Pascal’s Wager is enough to break people’s brains.

This is something that happens in all sorts of subcultures and communities, whether racial, interest based or sociopolitical, especially on social media, which is the Emotional Contagion Engine writ large. All social media has a tendency to cook people’s brains if they don’t take a moment to talk to someone who isn’t terminally online.

Without steady, regular check-ins with people in physical space, who aren’t terminally online, it’s all too easy to mistake s--tposts for reality. Touching grass isn’t just a way of saying “delete your account”, it’s saying “try to keep this s--t in perspective by reconnecting with the world around you as it actually is.”

I bring this up because I think you’ve internalized this to an unhealthy degree. Yes, racism is very real, the effects of it are very real… but I think you’ve taken online hate and ragebait and are treating it like it’s already happened before you’ve even talked to someone. One of the things I notice is that you aren’t talking about having experienced this personally, which makes me wonder how much of what you’re describing in the final paragraphs of your letter is pure anticipation, rather than experience. You know better than I would – like I said, I’m a white dude and I’m not gonna try to judge what was racist and what wasn’t. But I think it’s worth asking yourself whether you’re anticipating problems and reacting to them in advance.

That’s something I see a lot of guys do, especially guys who are socially inexperienced or socially awkward: they play out worst-case scenarios in their head and treat them as though they already happened, so they don’t bother starting in the first place. Why bother talking to that sexy somebody when it’s inevitable that they’ll think the worst about you?

In a real way, I think you’re rejecting yourself – assuming that someone inevitably is going to assume that you’re a rapist-in-waiting if you so much as say hello. And while I understand this is a form of self-protection, I think it’s serving more to isolate you than to help you. You mention that you’re lonely and that you’re avoiding social situations. Well… seeing as this isn’t making you happy, something’s going to have to give.

One of the truths about dating is that, right or wrong, people are going to make assumptions about you. That’s just human nature; we’ve got pattern-recognizing brains and some of those patterns include “what can we expect from a stranger, based these visible traits?” But we can help shape and guide the assumptions they make based on our behavior and presentation to ease the initial introduction, and we can disrupt or disprove others when we actually connect with them. But to do that, we have to actually make the effort of getting to know them and letting them get to know us as individuals. That can’t happen if you’ve permanently got your guard up or you’re avoiding people entirely.

With regards to dating, especially dating as an Indian-American man… well, leaving aside the questions of “do you even have the time”, you’re going to want to approach things with a mix of realism and optimism. That is: recognize the legitimate challenges you’re going to face, but don’t assume that you’re always heading into a buzzsaw of stereotypes, but rather meeting people as individuals. Part of this means devoting your time and energy where you’ll get the most bang for your buck. I know I’m always banging on about how much dating apps suck these days but they can suck especially hard for Asian men and Black women. It’s easy for folks to get tunnel vision and only focus on the people they think they want, while missing opportunities for serendipity. A lot of the people we think are great matches on paper don’t work in person, but we often find that we click with people we’ve met in person, even though we might have swiped left on the apps. Why? Because the apps show you a very limited view of someone from a curated list; meeting someone in person gives us a different perspective and lets us see them in ways we couldn’t possibly perceive in an “about me” summary.

So in your case, I’d recommend focusing on meeting people in person and to date slow – that is, meet folks in general without the pressure of “turn this into a potential date ASAP”. If you’re meeting someone socially without immediately putting things in a dating framework, you’ve got an opportunity to actually get to know them as a person and vice-versa. Part of the benefit of getting to know people over time is that the more we get to know someone, the more we tend to find them attractive. As we become more familiar with them, what makes them unique is what makes them special to us. So even things that we might not necessarily find appealing in others is part of what makes them who they are, and thus why we like them, specifically.   

This also means that you learn about them, beyond “ok, she’s hot” … including whether this person is worth your time or not.

That part’s important. I can understand the drive to fight the image of the sexless Indian man at every opportunity, but there’s a lot to be said for not wasting your time on people who aren’t going to be right for you, regardless. Not everyone’s going to like you – not because of your race or because of stereotypes, but simply because nobody is going to appeal to everyone, and that’s ok. A lot of those people aren’t going to be right for you, too. And quite frankly, it’s not worth your time to try to win over folks who don’t like you, whether for racist reasons or completely banal ones. The level of effort it takes to try to change “dislike” or “racist stereotyping” to neutral, never mind a positive impression, is never commensurate with the reward. Better to focus on the people who are positively inclined towards you, instead.

So – again, allowing for having the time and energy �– if you want to date and ease that loneliness, you’re going to have to be willing to lower your guard and meet people where they are. Are some folks going to be s--tty? Yeah. Are there folks who are going to be s--tty to you specifically because you’re an Indian man? Certainly. But all of life is going to have risk. It’s not evenly distributed, but it’s always going to be there. You have to decide if the reward is worth the risk, but you also have to be willing to take the risks to get the reward.

You’re the only one who can make that decision.

Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m a woman who has never been a relationship before. I just discovered your blog yesterday and I wanted to ask a question. There’s this cute guy I’ve been seeing for the past year every time I go to church during Sundays. He’s a serves the church as a sacristan. I wanted to get to know him and if possible, ask for his number and maybe ask him out on a date.��I had thought about trying passing him a note introducing myself after mass but I don’t want him to think I’m weird for approaching him out of the blue. I worry I might make him feel awkward whenever he sees me at church.��I’ve caught him glancing at me a few times and I think he also caught me glancing at him as well. I’ve also noticed he makes an effort to serve at the line I’m at during communion (Perhaps I’m imagining things?) Last month, I caught him staring at me and we held our gaze for 5 seconds longer than necessary. I deeply regretted not giving him a warm shy smile to let him know I’m interested during that time.��I know this isn’t the most ideal circumstance to fall for someone but I was hoping you could give me a few tips.��Thank you and I hope to hear from you soon,�The Shy Rabbit

DEAR THE SHY RABBIT: Honestly, you’re overthinking things, TSR. I get why you’re doing it – you’re afraid of messing things up and being rejected. This is something a lot of people do; they want to meet someone, but deep down, they know that this requires that they make themselves vulnerable and they’re afraid of what might happen if they do. Being vulnerable, after all, means you’re opening yourself up to the possibility of being hurt, and being rejected hurts. It feels like it’s a judgement on your entire being – that someone sees the totality of you, has weighed and measured you and you have been found wanting.

Except that’s not true. Oh, rejection hurts, sure… but it’s a bug bite at worst, not the shattering of worlds. It’s the fear of that pain and the attempts to avoid it that make it worse, because you’re not focused on the outcome, you’re focused on the anticipation of pain. The anticipation makes everything worse, and trying to avoid it only serves to intensify it.

The truth of the matter is that when you’re more focused on avoiding the possibility of rejection, you just make more barriers for yourself. Each barrier and complication not only distances you from any possible outcome, but it also just creates more anticipation of rejection and hurt, which makes the hurt that much scarier. Nobody likes feeling scared, any more than they like being hurt, so they try to find ways to avoid feeling scared. But the more you try to create ways to avoid feeling scared of feeling hurt so that you don’t feel hurt, the more you create things that you’re scared of. You become scared of the possibility of being scared and find new and different ways to avoid it… and with every layer, the world you allow yourself to occupy becomes smaller and smaller and more confining.

The more time you spend trying to anticipate and account for all the variables or ways things could go wrong, the less time you’re actually giving to, y’know, talking to this person. This is important because just as trying to avoid that fear of rejection makes it worse, the more time you spend planning and less time you spend doing just invests the eventual act with awesome and terrible significance. You build up the importance of getting things right and how much this guy means, to the point where you’re sure you have an all-consuming passion for him, despite the fact that you don’t even know his name.

To be perfectly honest, trying to be coy by doing things like slipping him a note is going to be weirder than just going over and saying “hi”, especially since there’s really nothing weird about just going up and introducing yourself. Church is a social space. The point of going to services is to be among others who share your beliefs and values, to be part of the community and to connect with like-minded individuals. You’re supposed to get to know your fellow church-goers, just like you’re supposed to get to know people in class or at a party.

So here’s my advice. Next Sunday, when services end, stand up, give yourself to the count of three to gather your courage and go directly over to this guy. Say “hey, I’ve just realized I’ve been going here for over a year now and I don’t think I’ve met you yet. Hi, my name is The Shy Rabbit…” and then just let things flow from there.

Now here’s the important part: don’t worry about getting a date or his number just yet. Just focus on getting to know him as a person. Right now, you know literally nothing about him other than he’s cute and he’s a sacrist at your church. That’s it. You don’t know if you and he share the same sense of humor, if you can stand each other’s taste in music or even if he likes coffee, tea or energy drinks in the morning. Physical attraction’s great and all, but if you want something more, find out if he’s even worth your time first.

And don’t worry; you see him every Sunday. There’s no rush. You’ll have plenty of opportunities to get his number or say “hey, want to go get ice cream after this?” as you learn more about him.

Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: First, the exposition. The backdrop is not extraordinary these days; I’m facing down a really rough job market and the stress of big transitions in my life that really serves to complicate my perception of how much stress I SHOULD be feeling, all the while trying to work to turn my mental health around. I’ve made a lot of big steps forward, building up my social and professional network, but I still feel very stuck romantically, for reasons I deeply struggle to articulate. Practically, I feel like I find precious few opportunities in my day-to-day to find a partner, and apps like Bumble or Hinge net me a few conversations per year, and if I’m lucky, I’ll get a date that goes fine, but never more than that. There’s the concern about finishing my degree in a month or so and having to deal with a huge logistical shift with uncertain financial and social prospects, and all that feels like it’s to be expected, and I can account for it, more or less.��However, there’s a deeper pit of something I feel is really causing me a lot of pain, and very likely gets in my way when it comes to searching for a romantic partner, and has for 15 years. As I stated before, it’s really hard to articulate, and encompasses a lot of past trauma, self-esteem issues, and a whole bunch more that I haven’t been able to work out. I feel that I have plenty of great qualities that should make me attractive to a potential partner, and even one that I would be mutually attracted to. I’ve been out of the game so long I can’t be very articulate about what specifically I’m looking for, or what kind of person I want to be with, but it’s a “know it when I see it” sort of thing. Despite that, I have immense difficulty in truly believing that other people are or might be attracted to me. It’s something I haven’t felt (or maybe haven’t let myself feel) for just about half of my life now, and, to put it simply, I really get in my head about it.��As a recent point, I have a female friend I’ve had for a while, and the other day I sent her a message briefly explaining that while I’m not sure about anything, I have some type of feelings for her, and wanted to be up front about it, since we’ve been getting closer than I’ve been with a female friend in a long time: talking frequently, hanging out with just the two of us, etc. I figured it was an opportunity to ask for some sort of clarity regarding just how she sees me as a friend, since I’m very insecure about my own judgment on that sort of thing. While I’m fairly certain I brought it up in a reasonably appropriate, non-threatening sort of way, and I don’t really think I’ve done anything inappropriate or crossed a line, ever since I sent her that message, I’ve had this underlying feeling that hearkens back to my first breakup, 15 years ago, when I feel like I went completely overboard in seeking clarification as to my relationship with this person who I still wanted to at least consider a friend, and long story short, led to a few years of severe late teenage angst and depression that ultimately ended any hope of friendship, and left me feeling deeply guilty about not only the way I acted, but even how I felt.��To answer the question that I’m sure you’ve already formulated, I’m currently seeing a therapist, and have been for almost a year now, and this is what I really wanted to get a vibe check on. (yes, all the previous has been preamble, I apologize) I’ve tried to do therapy a number of times over the years, and while it has been very helpful in certain ways, there are things that I feel I’ve never really been able to dig to the bottom of, and I’m unsure if it’s a problem with me not doing my part, or not finding the right therapist. To be specific, I saw my first therapist weekly for about a year, I saw one every other week for a few months, one weekly through last summer, and I’ve been working with my current therapist weekly since October or so. It’s not in my nature to blame external factors when I can blame myself, which is easy to do when every week my appointment rolls around, and I find myself unable to articulate the things I’m really deeply struggling with, either not being able to find the words, or self-censoring out of a habitual suppression of emotions I’ve deemed to be harmful, and I’m not sure which. I also understand that healing is a slow process, but feel that between thinking on it and working myself, and the work I’ve done with therapists, I’m still feeling the same things now at 31 that I felt when I was 16 and f--king things up for myself.��To put it into a distinct question that’s appropriate to ask someone who’s NOT my therapist, how can I tell if I need to push through my hesitancy and be more honest with my therapist, or if that hesitancy is something I need to find a better therapist to help me push through? As I said, my predisposition is to always blame myself first before blaming others, but I find it hard to know if I’m not getting where I want to be because I’m not getting the help I need from my therapist, or if I need to do more work to allow them to give me the help I need. There’s also the tendency I have to downplay the things I’m struggling with, and feel like they’re somehow petty concerns that I shouldn’t still be dwelling on, or that focusing on how lonely I’ve been for 15 years and continue to feel is harmful and I need to avoid thinking like that. It’s as though no matter how many times I’m told “this is a safe space”, I’m still unable to voice some feelings, not just because I’m used to suppressing them, but also because I’m deeply resistant to letting myself share these feelings that hurt me and my first relationship all those years ago, because it feels like undoing progress I’ve made (or convinced myself I’ve made).��It is, of course, not a fast process, and after struggling for a decade and a half, I’m certainly eager to see more results, but I also don’t want to let my rather high capacity for patience leave me unhealed and loveless for another 15-20 years. I already lost the opportunity for love during my 20s, and am still processing that. I really don’t want this to be a major pastime for me throughout my life.��Regards,�-It’s Not You, It’s Me

DEAR IT’S NOT YOU IT’S ME: Can I ask you an honest question, INYIM: are you sure the problem isn’t that you don’t know how to express what you’re feeling but that you’re so worried about actually saying it that you dump endless qualifiers and context into everything, turning every sentence into a marathon?

I’m not dunking on you for s--ts and giggles, especially as I am the king of “why use one word when you can use six instead?” I think you’re trying way too hard to avoid any possibility of conflict or someone getting upset at you that it gets int the way of actually communicating. You’re filling up space with so much that it stops being information and starts being noise. There’s wanting to make sure you have sufficient context and information and then there’s the point where the actual information is lost in a slurry of “please don’t be mad at me”.

Your asking your friend for clarity is a prime example. You drop nearly 300 words to describe a situation without actually conveying any meaningful information, when you could’ve just said “I told a friend I think I may have a crush on her and wanted to find out if she was on the same page. Now I’m worried I f--ked up, somehow”. 99% of what you threw into that very long sentence could’ve been cut and made things far clearer. Instead, it’s a long and ramble-y journey that ultimately goes nowhere.  

If I’m being perfectly honest, I think this is as much about you as it is about whomever you’re trying to communicate with.

This isn’t the first letter I’ve gotten this year from someone who’s been unwilling – not unable, unwilling– to actually open up to their therapist about how they’re feeling and what they’re dealing with, and they tend to fall in very similar patterns. Lots of explaining, lots of qualifiers, but it’s all ultimately the verbal equivalent of flack, trying to keep people from actually seeing or reaching the target. It’s the same sort of emotional self-defense, but also self-flagellation, trying to intellectualize away the fear of just being honest and vulnerable. 

I’m wondering if part of the problem isn’t that you don’t know what you want or aren’t sure how to articulate the issue so much as you don’t let yourself actually answer the question. Reading through this – which I had to do multiple times, by the way – I get the distinct impression that you’re ultimately trying to hide how you really feel from yourself, and I think you need to dig into that.

And to be fair: I get that. I’ve had break ups where I wanted to “be the bigger person” and “be mature and reasonable about this” and tried to pretend that I wasn’t angry about the break up or that I felt it wasn’t fair or handled badly. But because I wanted to maintain this idea that I was handling things “the right way”, I tried my damnedest to convince myself I wasn’t feeling those things, even though I absolutely was. Needless to say, that meant that I was carrying around a lot of feelings that I refused to acknowledge, never mind deal with, and that kept me from moving on the way I should have.

But making matters worse is that this all seems to stem from s--t that happened when you were 16. I get that high-school relationships have more drama than the Royal Shakespeare Society but there comes a point where you have to recognize that it was high-school. Everyone’s a goddamn mess in high-school and anyone who says that they had it all figured out is either lying or deluding themselves.

You need to be willing to say “yeah, I did some stupid s--t because I was a teenager and didn’t know wat the hell I was doing,” and let it go. Was it embarrassing? Of course. Was it cringe? Naturally; our teenage years are made of cringe. Cringe is what happens when you’re stuck in a space where you’re expected to be an adult without the rights or privileges or even brain development of one, but still treated as a child regardless. But part of growing up is being able to look back and go “Damn that was awkward but I see how I ended up there”, not “this is going to define me for the rest of my life”.

You’re clearly trying very hard to intellectualize things that shouldn’t be intellectualized, as though that’s going to change the feelings themselves. So maybe you need to stop trying to change things or pretend that you’re not feeling them and just let yourself feel them. And I mean just feel them – no qualifiers, no context-clarification, no “ok but…”. Just finally lower the shield, open the flood gates and let that s--t out. You’ve let this emotional wound get infected and now you need to drain the pus before you can disinfect it and close it back up.

So yes, you’re not making progress with your therapist precisely because you’re not actually participating in your therapy. The whole point of therapy is that you’re talking to someone who is there to listen to you without judgment, secure in the knowledge that nothing you say leaves that room. It is the place for emotional vomit, to just open your mouth and let the firehose go, giving voice to those feelings that you’ve been trying to tamp down. Yes, even the petty s--t, the inconsequential s--t, the s--t that you think is so banal that you don’t think it’s worth the bother to bring up. Because, let’s be real here: we’ve long established that maybe you’re not the best judge about whether this is inconsequential, petty s--t after all.

Instead, all you’ve done is try to push them away and pretend they don’t exist. This just serves to pressurize the entire mess, compacting them into something denser, more intense and more likely to break containment.

So here’s what you need to do: you need to get a pen and a notebook and just start writing. No thinking, no editing, no intellectualizing, no trying to make it coherent or sensible or to minimize it. Just open the valve in your brain and let it spill out through your pen onto paper in its rawest form. No agenda, no “today I’m going to write about my feelings on Z”, just dumping every single thought you have out exactly as you have it in that moment.

And yes, I mean write, by hand, on physical media, not typing or dictating. You want this to be as pure brain-vomit as possible, with no stops or pauses or barriers. Writing it out long-hand is as direct a connection between brain and output as you can get without literally wiring your brain up to a recording device that can turn theta waves into language.

Do this daily from now until your next appointment with your therapist. Then take your journal with you to your therapy appointment and say “ok, I’ve been having problems opening up and saying what I really feel”, then show them this.

If you still have an issue with expressing how you feel or figuring it out, write it down with as few words as possible. You want to be Hemmingway, not Faulkner. You’re not trying to paint a picture, you’re trying to communicate, and you’ve been using verbal noise as a barrier. Now it’s time to distill everything down to its essence and deal with the actual issue, not all the mental equivalent of artificial colors and flavoring to make it more “palatable”. Bring those with you and read them, out loud, to your therapist. Then actually listen to what they say and try taking it on board. It’s going to be hard because, up until now, you’ve been trying your best to never let anyone know what you’re feeling and now you’re going to feel ashamed and judged. You need to be willing to let that all go and just be raw and vulnerable because, quite frankly, you’ve put this off for far too long and that hasn’t helped at all.

I’m always saying: if you want things to be different, you have to do things differently. You’ve been doing the same thing for over a decade now and it has only made things worse. It’s time to shift gears, stop running from the fear of what’s going to happen if you actually face these feelings and get ready to embrace the suck. Because it will suck. But it’s the same sort of pain that comes from draining an abscess, disinfecting it and stitching it closed. Until you’re willing to do that, it’s just going to continue to fester and rot and expand until the infection takes the rest of you.

You’ve been living with this for long enough. It’s time to let it out and let it go.

Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com