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Ask HN: Are you lost / confused / stuck? I can try to help

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Re: Ask HN: Are you lost / confused / stuck? I can try to help

#21

Post by samh748 »

textadventure wrote: post #15

Sorry to have to be that person but I think it's plainly irresponsible to put yourself in a position to want to help people who are troubled, lost and confused and possibly in need of professional help on which you claim to have no training. If therapy isn't helping it's generally a matter of a specific therapist who may not be working for you, but psychology is something for which people have studied and trained for…

I totally understand your point and anticipated there will be pushback like this.

However, from what I've observed, there seems to be a significant lack of actually helpful support and resources for people who fall into these two categories:

1) People who think their problems aren't serious enough to seek therapy

2) People who have seen therapy but haven't gotten much success from it

I'm sorry if my big intro wasn't clear enough and gave the wrong impression. I haven't figured out my elevator pitch yet and that's exactly why I'm here testing things out.

Re: Ask HN: Are you lost / confused / stuck? I can try to help

#22

Post by fouc »

Can't have relationship problems if you have no relationships. /s

Nice idea though, I definitely think it can be immensely helpful to have someone listen and avoid parroting all the typical stuff, offering unconventional perspective or offering unconventional phrasing is worth 1000x more.

Re: Ask HN: Are you lost / confused / stuck? I can try to help

#23

Post by textadventure »

R0b0t1 wrote: post #16
textadventure wrote: post #15

Sorry to have to be that person but I think it's plainly irresponsible to put yourself in a position to want to help people who are troubled, lost and confused and possibly in need of professional help on which you claim to have no training. If therapy isn't helping it's generally a matter of a specific therapist who may not be working for you, but psychology is something for which people have studied and trained for…

The track record for real therapy is pretty poor and sometimes the answer you get is "go interact with other people." I don't see this being worse than the nothing that is usually available, but it is a pretty weird website to do it on.

According to what do you conclude that the track record for real therapy is pretty poor? Some study or just some subjective perception?

Re: Ask HN: Are you lost / confused / stuck? I can try to help

#24

Post by samh748 »

throwaway81523 wrote: post #19

> To get to my point, I want to start some kind of service/platform where people can come to talk things through and have a sustained conversation about their experience of feeling lost, confused, stuck. If I understand what you're imagining, there are already subreddits for every variety of that. In the old days there was alt.angst on usenet, but it is likely defunct or taken over with spam by now. There are or were…

I thought that was what I was imagining too, but I realized that what I'm offering isn't simply "a place to talk about your problems". What's missing in these communities, I think, is a particular level of expertise and understanding of personal development, our ego, personality differences, etc. It's hard to describe, that's why I don't really know how to pitch my idea succinctly.

Re: Ask HN: Are you lost / confused / stuck? I can try to help

#25

Post by samh748 »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #11
samh748 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for this. Yeah I definitely won't want to venture into the "serious stuff" exactly for the reasons stated. My experience has been that, it's the in-between severity that seems to lack good resources. The stuff that self-help books try to address and fail miserably at. The struggles people have that are unsettling, but not serious enough to seek therapy. My whole life is living in this middle place, so it took…

> My experience has been that, it's the in-between severity that seems to lack good resources. Yes good point, this is an issue with so many services. It's often people in the grey area, falling between the cracks, that get the worst deal - too well to seek help, too messed up to function properly. (I don't want to derail your thread but I think much is down to lack of simple human contact/friendship caused by digita…

Yeah I appreciated the feedback. I love feedback, it's all good information to chew through and think about. :)

> It's often people in the grey area, falling between the cracks, that get the worst deal - too well to seek help, too messed up to function properly.

Couldn't have described it better!

Re: Ask HN: Are you lost / confused / stuck? I can try to help

#26

Post by justajot »

I can identify with much of what you wrote, especially surrounding the desire to help others. Noting another comment on how you don't want to deal with the "serious stuff," I'm highly recommending you look into the coaching profession. It sounds to be exactly what you're looking for in terms of training.

In general, therapy is designed to help people who are suffering from mental health and emotional wellness issues. The goal is help these people to baseline. Coaching assumes a baseline level of mental health and emotional wellness, and is designed to move people towards some measurable goal. Advice giving is not a part of either of these professions for good reason.

Consultants and mentors are related professions that ARE about advice-giving. These are wonderful as well, just different.

Also, many kudos for putting yourself out there!! There are tons of people who need and are looking for help.

source: am a coach trained by an ICF (International Coaching Federation) accredited program.

Re: Ask HN: Are you lost / confused / stuck? I can try to help

#27

Post by gurjeet »

coolhoody wrote: post #3

The funny thing about this — is that quite a lot of people can help others — while not being able to help themselves. I had a startup idea — for people in need of such help helping and motivating each other — noticing that I can solve rather complex problems of others while being a prize moron within my own code block. Didn't follow through due to d. My advice to you is: 1. Don't be discouraged if this dies in 'New',…

Full version of Self Help Singh's video, for those interested:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rerBnAKPn0

Re: Ask HN: Are you lost / confused / stuck? I can try to help

#28

Post by samh748 »

fouc wrote: post #22

Can't have relationship problems if you have no relationships. /s Nice idea though, I definitely think it can be immensely helpful to have someone listen and avoid parroting all the typical stuff, offering unconventional perspective or offering unconventional phrasing is worth 1000x more.

> offering unconventional perspective

I was thinking exactly that, but didn't want to get mixed in with more mystic / uber-spiritual advice. No offence to people who follow those, it's just not accurately what I'm offering.

> Can't have relationship problems if you have no relationships. /s

The lack of relationships is a relationship problem. ;)

Re: Ask HN: Are you lost / confused / stuck? I can try to help

#29

Post by ipaddr »

justajot wrote: post #26

I can identify with much of what you wrote, especially surrounding the desire to help others. Noting another comment on how you don't want to deal with the "serious stuff," I'm highly recommending you look into the coaching profession. It sounds to be exactly what you're looking for in terms of training. In general, therapy is designed to help people who are suffering from mental health and emotional wellness issues.…

Many people are baseline but struggle to reach higher. Perhaps advice would work for this group.

Re: Ask HN: Are you lost / confused / stuck? I can try to help

#30

Post by textadventure »

samh748 wrote: post #21
textadventure wrote: post #15

Sorry to have to be that person but I think it's plainly irresponsible to put yourself in a position to want to help people who are troubled, lost and confused and possibly in need of professional help on which you claim to have no training. If therapy isn't helping it's generally a matter of a specific therapist who may not be working for you, but psychology is something for which people have studied and trained for…

I totally understand your point and anticipated there will be pushback like this. However, from what I've observed, there seems to be a significant lack of actually helpful support and resources for people who fall into these two categories: 1) People who think their problems aren't serious enough to seek therapy 2) People who have seen therapy but haven't gotten much success from it I'm sorry if my big intro wasn't…

If you are serious about helping people, you'd encourage anyone who is feeling lost and confused to seek professional help. If you can facilitate that somehow, provide people with free options, social workers, hot lines, etc, you'd have something of value.

I still think that putting yourself out there to lend an ear to strangers is irresponsible. Because this is not about someone who you've come across in your life and you have a talk and maybe give some advice, you'd be actively encouraging people to talk to you and that's the irresponsible part. Your intentions may be good, but this is not the right way to go about it.

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