Hey, deserving listeners. Today's episode is going to be a long, long episode. It's a deep dive

that I've been working on for a few months now, and the deep dive is on avoidant personality disorder.

This is going to be a patron-only episode, by the way. So if you're not a patron, you won't be able to listen to the full

episode. This is the first episode in a series that I'm going to be doing on loneliness in general.

Lots of people suffer from loneliness. I get emails about it every, almost every day. I talk with

clients about it. I talk with supervisees and students about it.

Loneliness is very, I don't know, it's highly prevalent. And I've never felt very good in the way

that I help people with their loneliness. I've found some success with some people, but with a lot of people, when I try to help

them, it never really works, especially when people email me because I don't have a lot.

They're not clients and I can't really get into it with them.

And I've come to realize that the typical advice that people give about reducing loneliness is

useless.

Like telling people to, you know, just get out there. Just get out there. Be yourself.

You know, try to make friends. Cultivate relationships. Maybe dating apps or Facebook groups

or, you know, you have to pursue your friends, cultivate long-term

relationships, reach out to others. Sometimes you've got to put up with flaky friends. Maybe always

say yes to social events or be vulnerable. You know, all this is good advice, but I've worked

with people individually with this kind of thing and found that it doesn't do anything none of these

things have have really worked sometimes they do but you know most people that i talk about these

things with it they just remain lonely year after year after year and it makes me really really

sad for them because the these that I know, I know

to be lovely, likable, interesting, dynamic human beings who anyone would be happy to have

...