Like I grew up essentially being a homeschooled church kid (who was also abused too) living in a rural rural area, not like a suburb like actual countryside. The homeschooled part is kinda just more that my parents sorta given up on trying after 6th grade. The church kid part was mostly enforced by my parents to try to have a social outlet for me. But at the end of it I just don't know how to talk to people, which has its own set of negative consequences.
It gets worse when any resemblance of community around here is steeped heavily in religion of the evangelical variety. So even if I wanted to I couldn't do anything without being told some nonsense about how everything wrong with me is that I'm a 'lost sheep' that needs to reconnect with god. Including going to get therapy, because I've heard that some of the professionals here is on that BS too.
And the more I'm thinking about it, the more I feel like I'm completely screwed out of having a relatively normal life. Not to mention I found a way to unintentionally self sabotage the first relationship I had.
And this just turned into me rambling about my situation.
I think your impulse to start with therapy is a really good and healthy one. Can you do therapy online? I wonder if Open Path Collective might be a good resource for you - sliding scale, lots of modalities and specialities to choose from, etc.
Fwiw, I don't think you're screwed out of a normal life. I was raised in evangelical church, went to a christian school for 8th-12th grades with the "Beka Book" textbooks. My life 25 years after high school isn't perfect and I struggle quite a bit, mostly due to childhood trauma and (until recently) undiagnosed ADHD & autism, and I don't have many friends, but I've got a really cool kid and a wonderful partner and some amazing pets.
I believe in you. ❤️ Happy to talk anytime, please feel free to DM me. 🤗
I've known that I should be going to therapy for years now, except I really just don't have the time to. To explain, I work night shift at a factory from 11pm to 7am, and I have to drive about 25mi one way to get there so I leave the house about 10pm to get there and get back home around 7:40. And I try to go to sleep about an hour after I get home, and how much sleep I get isn't exactly consistent, some days I get up at 4pm, some days it's 5pm, and most of the time it's normally 6pm by the time I actually get out of bed. Most places around here open anywhere from 8-9am and close from 5-6, so i'm already kinda SoL on scheduling alone.
And this isn't getting into the last time I tried to seek therapy, it wasn't really going well at all, and one time the therapist I was supposed to see had called in that day and the office didn't tell me until I got there, and told me that they'd call me to reschedule. It shouldn't take much to figure out what part didn't happen, but the therapist I was seeing was kinda on the path of thinking my whole problem was just that I just needed to get laid. Which comes back to op about what i said of the quality of therapists i've heard that we've got out here...
Oh yeah, that mental health office that did all that is the only one within 5 miles of me.