You know the type, probably a good father or worker, but serious faced all the time, never smiles, often in a bad mood, very cynical. It’s just I feel like I’m on the path to this, I’m 28, just escaped 12 years of food service so I’m already super cynical and if someone comes up to me, I’m super ready to shut down whatever’s about to happen. I feel like working with customers for years I’ve learned to have giant walls up and I can’t seem to remove them. I see the other guys in the factory I’m working at laughing and joking all the time, I think of myself as funny but it’s always deadpan humor and I wish I could genuinely smile and laugh and make friends with the other guys. Any old timers or well travelers out there have any advice?

      • intensely_human@lemm.ee
        1·
        11 months ago

        Sort of like a cross between group therapy and a mastermind group. Mostly we just check in which whatever’s good or bad going on, how it makes us feel. There’s a focus on minimizing the details and sticking to what things feel like right here and now, as a way of getting in tune with what feelings are present.

        I had no idea this was true, but I couldn’t identify which feelings I was feeling. I only expressed, and allowed myself to identify, emotions that matched who I was in my story.

        Now I feel my actual literal emotions. Directly. It’s made it so much easier to make life decisions. And I feel a lot less out of place in life. I actually feel like part of humanity now.

        • botengang@feddit.de
          1·
          11 months ago

          Sounds fantastic. Is there an organization for such groups? I’ve never heard of them before.

          Maybe apart from masonic lodges…