/feels/ - Advice & Venting

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I’ve come to a brutal but necessary conclusion: kindness is overrated when handed out like free samples at a grocery store. I’ve spent years marinating in people-pleasing, thinking empathy was some kind of moral currency. Plot twist — it’s not. In practice, being an open nerve ending only gets you exploited. People don’t respond to kindness; they respond to boundaries. Harsh truth: excessive agreeableness is not virtue — it’s social self-sabotage.

I simp for validation like a lab rat pressing the dopamine lever, and it’s pathetic. It’s classic intermittent reinforcement — a core concept in behavioral psychology — where unpredictable rewards (a compliment, a message back) condition you to keep chasing. It’s the same mechanism that keeps gamblers at the slot machines, and I’ve basically been gambling my self-worth on other people’s approval.

I’ve also been stuck in a victim identity loop. That’s where you start romanticizing your suffering, treating pity as a currency, and staying small because pain becomes familiar. It’s textbook learned helplessness with a side of digital masochism. No more. Self-pity is a trap disguised as self-awareness. I’m done wearing trauma like a personality badge.
A few days ago, I trusted two people on a new account — max security, minimal exposure — and still got doxxed. That’s not just betrayal, it’s stupidity on my part.
Bottom line: Empathy without discernment is emotional self-harm. Validation-seeking is a rigged slot machine. And kindness? It needs a filter, not a floodgate. I’m done being a walking weakness detector for predators online. New arc: ruthless, aware, emotionally sovereign.
How do I stop compulsively empathizing and people-pleasing when I know it’s just a maladaptive trauma response dressed up as kindness, and how do I unhook my brain from chasing validation like it’s crack? How do i stop caring?

all my life ive been the social stereotype of ugly. overweight, acne, frizzy hair, hyperpigmentation, etc. never been bullied but received a joke here and there which made me held back from interacting romantically with my peers all my life. ive been fixing that for a couple years now and im quite comfortable with how i look now but ive have missed out everything romantically. don't know how to talk to men, ive never been in a relationship, im a virgin which is embarrassing at my age (26) and i think im hopeless since i already missed out the years were ive should have learned that stuff.

last year i got diagnosed with autism and adhd but im currently on therapy and meds and i don't think that's a big deal since ive seen girls with the same diagnose doing just fine socially.

This makes me feel like shit tbh, sometimes i just think about how bad i want to be loved and wanted and now that my physical appearance isn't in the way is the fact that i don't know shit.

how do u be a better person and develop empathy no joke. without speaking to anyone except my boyfriend ever (no glue no borax) i treated him so horrible i just want to give him everything he deserves hes helped me so much in life hes saved me but i keep lashing out at him and blaming him because everything feels so wrong in my head and idk what to do he said im a narcissist but idk how to fix that therapy isnt an option because every single time ive gone ive been completely enabled and it was horrible, im not conscious at all of my bad traits either i grew up isolated as fuck im too socially retarded to even realize doesssanyone else get that what do we do nonaz

This happend a week ago I can't stop thinking about it and im so depressed. So after work I asked this guy if he wanted to do something on our day off he just " no sorry I am busy" no problem right!? The next day the manager called me " sorry I am going to let you go because one our workers doesn't feel comfortable around you" this was probably my worst rejection ever I already got over him, but it was my job man my livelihood. Now I am here worrying about money and still job hunting… the job market is so bad. This is probably the most depressing summer yet and it's my birthday tomorrow don't feel like celebrating it. Just hopefully dying in my sleep. I hate being alone.

I feel like I'm so ugly without makeup. Even after being showered in compliments. I get many compliments from unattractive men. I never get any from men that are good looking. Tinder, instagram, real life

How do I cope?

The whole phenomenon of this dude is proof that standards/body-shaming/fatphobia don’t exist for males. If the original post had been of a woman it would be like any other post and be lost to time. But because someone had the audacity to try to socially enforce any rock bottom, bare minimum physical standard for the sacred male, everyone threw a fit and he got a whole media festival of events, money and opportunities thrown at him for weeks on end. In real life a female is torn to shreds for not spending most of her mental energy on appearances, but something as febrile as “hey maybe a male shouldn’t be so fat he can barely walk” is completely socially unacceptable and would get you fired while every handmaiden within ten miles performatively throws themselves on his gangrenous fat-entombed micropenis.

Just graduated college and nothing’s really worked out how I hoped. High School especially, but also college to some degree, were rough for me socially. Barely got attention from guys most of my life. Started getting some over the past year, but it's mostly been disasters. One dude was a Letterboxd freak who tried to touch me, stood me up, and publicly wrote weird, angry stuff about me on his account. Tried Hinge—been on multiple dates recently and they’ve all been awful. One guy got mad at me for not thinking Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is deep art and “representative of the human condition” and then started playing alone on a playground mid-date.
I’ve moved back to my hometown and have been doing a 9 to 5 ever since graduation. I tried auditioning for a band and signing up for an art class to make life feel less mind numbing, but the band rejected me and the class guy never replied. I've tried using bumble bff but I don't have much time to text so most people lose interest quickly. I live with an alcoholic dad who screams at me and puts me down, and the house is literally full of black mold. I kind of had a couple of friends in college (none that really returned my efforts fully), but here, I have pretty much nobody except for one person who I rarely ever see. I had to break up with my ex of a few months before leaving my college town, partially because of the move. He was really the only guy I’ve ever gone out with who I felt was decent and with who there was a mutual effort involved at the very least. I tried messaging him recently and it wasn’t a bad conversation but it felt very sterile—almost like he never actually cared in the first place.
Just feel like I’m rotting in a cubicle for 8 hours a day, living in a horrible house, with no hope of ever having a proper boyfriend or even my own apartment (with the rent prices around where I live). I know this sounds dramatic but I seriously don’t know what I’m doing. I feel completely cooked.

I really need advice on what to do and how to proceed. I feel so stuck and like I can't leave this relationship. This is my first relationship ever and she's around 4 years older than me and has had multiple previous relationships that I feel like she's still not over. Initially in our relationship, all we would talk about would be her exes and how bad they were to her and a lot of information about her time with them, mostly bad things. She would still start her diary entries with her first ex's birthday, who she started dating in highschool. And most importantly talk about how leaving those relationships wrecked her emotionally. She has a very strong fear of abandonment that I just feel so trapped by. I had rejected her multiple times in the beginning but she kept pursuing me and I feel like I gave in to a relationship I never wanted.
I don't know if any of that matters now. I just don't know what to do, I feel so miserable in this relationship and whenever she talks about how she wants to be with me forever I just feel this paralyzing wave of anxiety and fear. I've performed complete self-abandonment. She says things like she wouldn't have survived this or that without me, I'm the only thing keeping her going, the only light in her life, and it just keeps me in this relationship. She's implied many times she will be extremely damaged if I leave and try to hurt herself, and that's not just jokes because after her last relationship ended, she tried to take her life and also on multiple occasions put her safety in jeopardy, fell into a drinking and drug problem (which she has since managed to heal from), and when we were first talking, she had also been talking to her ex, and from all she's told me, she's basically never been single since she was 16. I've always been single and I really enjoy my solitude and I want it back. I'm just so scared, this relationship makes me cry everyday. Recently she could tell I'd been extremely out of it emotionally, and we had a talk about being honest to each other and 'forgetting' our mistakes of the past. That include her discussing opening our relationship, said she 'felt something' for some moid, telling me she can't rely on me for jack because I fell asleep late at night instead of checking on her because she was out drinking with friends, among other things.
I don't even care about all that. I do love her and care about her a lot. I just don't know what to do but this relationship is eating at me. I feel likePost too long. Click here to view the full text.

I refuse to be friends with vegans anymore. I had a party, made fixings that were pricier than the other food to accommodate the vegan and she didn't even make it or give a heads up. Said before hand she would come, ended up posting photos on social media that same day where she was out on the town. She's also apparently a rich girl that's only ever used me as a sounding board for her shitty boyfriend that she'll do everything to fix except leave. And you know, blow me off. Bring your own food, asshole. I wish she knew she was a spoiled brat before I wasted my time.