7 upvotes, 0 direct replies (showing 0)
View submission: Am I losing my mind??
Working backwards through your post, because I want to give you all the credit for ending with asking for something specific to do with all of this:
Dunk your hands or face in some ice water.
https://www.kindmindpsych.com/using-the-divers-reflex-to-regulate-emotional-intensity/
You have a right to feel as upset as you do, or more if it helps you get what you want. I'm betting though that when you talk about feeling "distressed and helpless", moving from a 10/10 intensity of feeling to 8/10, or 8/10 to 6/10, is probably going to help more than sitting in it at the current level of intensity. If that's true, then commit to doing something about it, then read on.
Psychology In Seattle is the first resource that comes to mind. It's run by a man who's a therapist, professor and host to a bunch of his own friends, more than half of the ones who appear on the show being men, often talking about mens' issues with friendships and relationships. His patreon episodes ($5, not affiliated, just subscribed to it myself for a while) for deep dives on issues like attachment security and emotional neglect are a pretty unique resource, but on the direct topics you're asking for, here are a handful of episodes:
https://www.spreaker.com/episode/loneliness-experience--42753016
https://www.spreaker.com/episode/masculinity-and-pod-plans--54555559
https://www.spreaker.com/episode/friend-sex-incels-and-killers-of-the-flower-moon--57782451
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hby8KxD1JIQ
I don't know of any books addressing the specific phenomenon of hurt men and hurt women clashing for airtime on the Internet. As those episodes talk about, there are a lot of factors that feed into it. Not least of all what /u/ThereWasAnEmpireHere is talking about with the group of people who are online at any given time probably overrepresenting those who are rude, possibly traumatized, abused and/or abusive themselves, and with an axe to grind. Other factors might be well-covered by books on sociology like *Bowling Alone* (have not read it, need to, believe in the general point about loss of third spaces being a serious issue).
Observations from my own life and people who are posting about this:
When you're in or fresh out of high school, maybe early career or career not even really started, education unfinished, few other kind of traditional markers of identity, success or achievement to your name and you're trying to make sense of the world, a natural starting place is to treat all input more or less equally. That would work well if maybe 80-95% of the people that you would randomly stumble into in an online conversation were themselves experienced in the world, with a stable identity, level-headed, and genuinely interested in and open to your differing experience.
In practice, the intersection of all of those circles is extremely, extremely rare. This is part of why people make a big deal of media literacy, but it calls for at least as much discernment in individual interactions. You need to have at least some people around you (IRL or virtual) that make you feel good at least some of the time. That's kind of what this sub is for, and I hope you get it out of some genuine engagement here. Ideally, over time, you'd be doing enough that's good for yourself and good for other people on your own that those comments would eventually sink in and you'd start to feel some buffer where a nasty comment (deserved or not) doesn't feel like a potentially terminal threat to your self worth. That's not going to *stop* some woman online from telling you that you don't deserve to be talking about your own hurt, but that's the point: *nothing* is going to stop someone who wants to say that. That person is *guaranteed* to be out there, *right now*. That doesn't make their opinion the objective reality of the situation stretching outward infinitely in time and space.
What might feel infinite is the frustration you'll have to face on the way to making up your mind to do something else, for yourself, that doesn't involve changing the views of this other person. If you're fixated on them (or someone like them) being wrong and being hurtful towards you, you will lose this battle. Every time. That doesn't make you a worthless person but it does suggest maybe weighing other alternative things to read. You could also ask yourself some deeper questions about who earlier in your life you wished you won some argument with or convinced to care about you in a way they were never going to that this kind of interaction would scratch the same itch for. It fucking sucks not to be able to convince people who are themselves convinced they're morally in the right place to be nicer to you, but if you've tried multiple times and it's not happening, I'm hoping you can give yourself the permission to at least take a break, and maybe find a different perspective on it.
Good luck.
There's nothing here!