Opinions on Psychotherapy for Invcels

from a mailing list exchange. The text in italics is the author Alana's opinion.

"I plan to talk to my doctor about seeing a therapist."
I would actually recommend against this. Besides being a waste of your money, I would doubt that a therapist knows anything about invcel. A while back I tried searching for info related to invcel in psychology and found nothing. Maybe, I didn't search hard enough, but the fact that I had to search this hard to find nothing means that it isn't really available if it exists.

First, I'd like to counter R.'s opinion. If I had never seen a psychotherapist, I would never have had a girlfriend. There were many other benefits (indirectly, therapy helped my social life, my skin condition, my career, etc.) I paid a lot of money for therapy, and I don't regret a penny of it, miser that I am. I don't know how to emphasize this point enough: Therapy can help if you want it to. However, R. is correct that the psychological community does not recognize invcel. See below.

Also, a while back while reading alt.support.shyness, I remember reading about a man who tried to find a therapist to held him with his invcel, and the therapists said either that he was making it up, he was gay, or that he was being selected out of dating (social darwinism). I agree that therapists, being ignorant of invcel, will be inclined to these hypotheses.

"You're just making it up" - the therapist uses cognitive therapy to show you that you actually have met women, dated women, and they have tried to start relationships with you. Same strategy as for people who feel they are just pretending to be competent at work. Cognitive therapy helps if, and only if, you are lying to yourself.

"You're gay and in denial" - the obvious possibility when a man doesn't date women. Homophobia is so ingrained that many men will say "no, I really am interested in women" when they are not. So if you are telling the truth that you are heterosexual, therapists may not believe you. Maybe get them to test you by showing various kinds of dirty movie, or whatever test is convincing...

"Selected out of dating": no decent therapist would say "You are so undesirable that no-one will date you, so you should learn to like being single". And I don't think this is really true for anyone. If someone wants to improve their social skills, they can, and a therapist can help.

If you are contemplating therapy (or already in it), I would suggest telling your therapist about invcel. Point them to the website or mailing list, or bring printouts if your therapist is as low-tech as mine was. Point out these three common hypotheses. Make sure that the therapist will only say "you're gay" (or whatever) if they are really sure you are! (Hey, maybe I should put these three up on the web site!)

One big reason I started the invcel project was to get the psychotherapeutic community to recognize the invcel phenomenon. Academic research is a first step towards recognition, and Denise & her colleagues have started on this. But more needs to be done. Should we strategize to get the attention of psychotherapeutic organizations? To start this off, would someone like to research what organizations exist (various countries, various disciplines)? (this could be done on the web or in libraries, even by a shy person)
End of rant.

Opinion on psychotherapy from another mailing list member:

It isn't a cure-all, and at times feels like a money-eating scam, but it is weirdly powerful also. I'd say try it out. Go find one you trust, perferably on recommendation, go in with an open mind for the process itself but a critical frame of mind for the individual there. Go once a week for a couple of months and see what happens. After that, you may want to take some time off and get some perspective on the whole thing. You may find yourself missing it (like I unexpectedly did, so I went back). Or you may find it's not for you.

The advantage is that you are saying all the stuff you usually say just to yourself, but out loud to another person. That simple fact is more powerful than you might think. It's also a lot more work than you might think. You have to work through all of your assumptions - And I mean ALL of them - Out loud. A good shrink won't let you leave assumptions unexplained. Your world view tends to peel back like the layers of an onion. A very big onion. It's exhausting sometimes. I leave my sessions feeling like I just ran a marathon and I sleep like a rock at night afterwards. But it actually changes your relationships to your own thoughts, in a way that is hard to arrive at alone.

A invcel friend of mine who is now happily married (something he owes partially to therapy) once said to me, "if you feel disgusting and evil after a few weeks, you are probably getting better". Think of it as puking. You feel much better afterwards. Also, if it's going well, the regularity of this is something you grow to enjoy, like any other worthwhile ritual in one's life. Expect progress to be very slow. But go. You have nothing to lose.

(Stay away from Freudians).

"Discomfort is always a necessary part of the process of enlightenment."

- a quote from "What looks like crazy on an ordinary day" by Pearl Cleage, Avon Books, 1997.
For all of you wondering what a good relationship is, and good sex is like, check out this book.