I strongly suspect for many demographics, alternatives like a pastor or mentor work better on average at least for mild-medium needs. The money factor is finessed, there is more goodwill, and more humility on the part of the counterparty in recognizing the limits of helping.
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Big and important point
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Replying to @vgr
especially for non-whites. the harm and futility in both frameworks and cultural fluency is well documented
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I have low confidence in my anecdotal observation of lower rate/variety of nerddom among women. Whatever difference there might be is likely accounted for by lower leisure time due to higher housework/childcare/eldercare loads. Controlling for leisure, rate/variety is likely same twitter.com/NeuralBricolag
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Consulting/exec coaching is therapy adjacent. One of my firm beliefs is that nobody can do both well. So for a client my fit test is “are your personal issues covered enough through either therapy or jackass nerd interests that we can focus externally on management/leadership?”
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Interestingy, from my experiences helping junior individual contributor types (usually as a favor since they can’t afford to pay my rates) their psychological issues are more complex, not less. And typical blue collar types make me go “I’m not touching that with a 10 ft pole”
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In fact a selection pressure working for leadership roles is “are your issues simple enough to compartmentalize and solve with $?”
Average mental health issues work are too complex to fix, at an acceptable price, so end up as attrition forces.
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This is counterintuitive because famous leaders often exhibit almost cartoonish mental health issues, but this is in fact a tell. Their issues are simple enough to caricature into archetypes like “entrepreneur with chip on shoulder and adoption trauma” and manage effectively
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The average grunt otoh is trapped in an NP-hard mental condition that’s unfortunately not worth solving given available human unit economics. Give him a “history of Rome” book and hope he copes without opioids.
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Btw even if you interpret “therapy” as synecdoche for not looking inwards at all, I think avoiding and externalizing/displacing is on average sound. Most people suck at introspection, and have like 0 frames for it. Or worse, 1 really bad frame. They’re better of coping outwards.
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Replying to
this said, what alternatives might you suggest? the church, some nerdom spaces, groups etc can be wildly anti-women for instance, and reinforce or at least fail to ease the brunt of the pain that gets externalized to them
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I've got nothing. The church is ultimately a reactionary and regressive option. And yeah, many masculine nerd spaces are misogynistic etc. but probably better than the alternatives.

