Following a decade of failed relationships and hostile confrontations, you begin wondering if something is wrong with you, or whether everyone you choose to associate with has a collective mental health issue. So, you go to a shrink – referred to you on Reddit – who blankets you with his, her, or their personal countertransference issues, while trying to determine whether your portrayal of the real you, or what you thought was the real you, is authentic or a subterfuge serving to hide some rather unsavory aspects of an “unconscious” real you, otherwise known as the shadow.
After studying Jungian psychology for a year to learn more about your shadow – the shrink’s recommendation – and attending an anger management group for an additional year – the shrink’s recommendation – nothing has improved. So, both you and the shrink go onto Twitter for some help, but like magnets draw a mismash of hostile projections to your carefully crafted online personas, driving your anxiety and despondency to intolerable highs and lows. And even more ironic, throughout your stay on Twitter, neither one of you realize that you are tweeting each other, as your ever-changing online personas have transformed the pair of you into virtual strangers.
Another year passes, you’ve already quit therapy, and your primary care doctor prescribes you a high dose of Paxil, since by this time you are a nervous wreck and feeling hopeless over having no friends, no sex life, and a failing online romance with your ex-shrink, whom you still don’t recognize as having been your shrink.
With time, the Paxil quells your anxiety and makes you blissfully numb to your sadness. However, you gain 50 pounds from the side effects and decide to quit the Paxil, go through a month of agonizing withdrawals, and begin meeting strangers from the Craigslist for casual sex, hoping this will distract you from the horrific realization that your ex-shrink has “got off” to your intimate pics and then ghosted you, upon his, her, or their realization of having been your actual shrink.
Ten more years pass by in a hurry, and you are now bald; impotent from a bad batch of Covid vaccines; have an STD, courtesy of your Craigslist adventures; and sixty years old is right around the corner. You spend your nights trolling the “Psychology Today” page, acting as if you are a guest lecturer, contributing commentaries on what works and doesn’t work in life, but mainly what doesn’t work, including psychotherapy and love on the Internet.
At some unknown point in time, social media loses its grip on humanity, and is replaced by something that we cannot even fathom in 2021. So, you come here to hang out, on Notes from David, where you feel relieved to find someone “apparently” more cynical than yourself! 😉
© 2021 David M. Rubin. All rights reserved.
Notes from David 