A Caveat Before We Begin: To be clear, my purpose with this article is definitively not to scare you or make you paranoid that therapy is harmful, or think that your therapist is dangerous and untrustworthy. Rather, I simply want to acknowledge the fact that you might already be feeling this way. You don’t need to talk to your therapist about it yet, but for yourself it’s important just to know that it’s OK for you to feel anxious before your therapy sessions, and that there is a good reason why you might feel uncomfortable enough to want to quit. Most importantly of all, these feelings don’t at all mean that you’re a “bad client” or that there is something wrong with you. As sincerely as it’s possible for text to put an idea across, I hope that this is the message you will recieve: You’re fine, it’s therapy that’s weird.
I’ll talk in more depth about the perfectly natural phenomenon of “transference” in another article, but for now it’s enough to say that how you feel about your therapist will undoubtedly have an effect on your comfort level and how deeply you can engage with your therapy. But, if you pay attention to your feelings towards your therapist and acknowledge them, those feelings will become less of an unconscious obstacle, and more of a conscious part of your therapeutic work. More importantly than doing “good work,” however, accepting that you have these feelings means that you will stop fighting against yourself, which conflict is, in my experience, the root of most of what is called “mental illness.”
I would argue that feeling weird about therapy just means that although you will (hopefully) eventually discover that your emotional “immune system” has been a little more enthusiastic than it needed to be, it is and was actually working just fine. And I hope this article will help you feel this way about yourself, too.
Therapy is Weird
So, to start with: therapy is a profoundly weird situation. There’s no other way to say it. In no other social arrangement are you expected to be utterly emotionally open with a total stranger whom you have to pay to listen to you. And in no other arrangement do you expect that stranger to absorb all of your emotions and then do the opposite of everything that seems to happen in a lot of our “normal” relationships (ie. they will listen actively, take you seriously, and not spend their time finding ways of making the whole conversation about themselves).
And before you can even start doing that weird thing, you are required to fill in forms and sign a contract, and thereafter each hour you spend talking to one another is framed by strict rules of responsibility and confidentiality. And, to boot, there is no other person in your life who will know so much about you and about whom you will know so very little.
There are many more weird aspects of therapy, but as far as I’m concerned, these are quite enough to start with. And if you find yourself thinking along these lines, rest assured that you’re not alone. There are many people who find this topsy-turvy arrangement confusing enough that they quit after only a session or two, and there are quite a lot more (like, a lot) who won’t even consider starting in the first place.
However, if you can get used to it—and it does take some getting used to, though it usually doesn’t take as long as you might think—you’ll find that the various strangenesses of therapy are not only helpful, but actually necessary for the whole thing to work. A lot of the time, people find that they actually need and want their therapist to be a stranger, because that way they they know they can trust them! Which sounds logically backwards, but there it is…
Thus, given that the whole situation is so upside-down and inside-out, I would be much more concerned if you didn’t feel at least a little bit uncomfortable during your early sessions.
SNAFU: Situation Normal, All Fucked Up
What can contribute to this confusion and discomfort about the whole therapy thing is when your therapist doesn’t acknowledge or even seem to notice the weirdness. They act as if the whole thing is perfectly sensible and normal—because for them it is totally normal. They spend all day in this weird space of talking to strangers about all of the intimate and taboo things that nobody talks about in public, and so sometimes they forget that what they’re doing can feel very risky indeed.
But ask them about their own first few months as a trainee therapist and they might tell you just how bizarre and uncomfortable the whole thing seemed. And more importantly, they might tell you about their own talker’s block and how incredibly nervous they were about being emotionally intimate with perfect strangers—and how terrified they were of talking about taboo subjects, offending someone, or simply saying something “stupid.”
So to be super clear: In my view, it is a good thing that you initially feel uncomfortable, because you are indeed in a profoundly weird situation. Feeling uncomfortable just means that your emotional “spidey senses” are doing exactly what they should be doing— they’re picking up on the many strangenesses of psychotherapy.
Finally, the thesis statement
Hence this article. There are a number of common feelings, reactions, and fears which trying to “open up” in this weird situation can bring up for people. On top of this basic strangeness, there are a number of common themes which can contribute to your discomfort with your therapist. As I said in the caveat, I present them here with the express purpose of normalizing them, because they are nothing to be ashamed of and nothing you need to hide from anyone, especially yourself.
Even the “neurotic” or “paranoid” feelings described below don’t necessarily mean that you’re “disturbed,” “defective,” or “mentally ill.” Human consciousness has both “rational” and “irrational” aspects, yet we are generally encouraged to (unfairly) punish ourselves for “being irrational” and have learned to shame-blame ourselves by calling them “crazy,” “weird,” or “insane.”
Not only is there no need to punish yourself for being nominally “neurotic,” but this “insanity” is a part of you, a vital and important part that can be understood, integrated, and leveraged as an emotional skill, rather than rejected as a source of shame and embarrassment. In other words, many of the thoughts and feelings we think make us “crazy” or “weird” are in fact incredibly common, and I would argue are indeed thoughts and feelings that everyone has from time to time. They just seem crazy or weird because nobody talks about them—because they’re afraid that everybody else will think they’re crazy and weird!
Waiting Till You’re Ready to talk about difficult things is not “resistant” or “withholding”
However, I want to be careful here. Just because it can be helpful to talk about “weird” or “unacceptable” thoughts and feelings, forcing yourself or feeling forced to do so before you are ready can be deeply upsetting and even harmful (depending on your personal history, of course). In therapy, you are not obliged to be any more open than you feel safe being. So, again, I am offering this discussion as something to think about, not necessarily as something you should or must talk about with your therapist right away.
And while we’re on the topic: Although it often doesn’t feel this way, and in spite of the fact that nobody talks about it; the only thing you are actually obliged to do in therapy is pay for your sessions. Literally everything else is voluntary. Unless your psychotherapist is also a doctor or a psychiatrist, they have no authority over you at all—and even then their authority is very, very limited. Unless they have a court order, no one can make you take pills, or do homework, or even turn up for your sessions.
Everything is therefore your choice, and in relational psychotherapy that’s the point. The conversation itself is the “therapy,” so, you choose to talk about what you need to talk about, if you want to talk about it, because you need to talk about it. And you talk about it how you want to talk about it, so that you get what you need out of the conversation. There’s more to it than just talking, but that’s the foundation: what you decide is important enough to talk about.
In other words, you are absolutely entitled to decide for yourself what, when, how much, and to whom you talk about your inner life. As a therapist, it is my legal and moral obligation to never force any technique, intervention, interpretation, or belief on you—including insisting that you be “open” and “honest.”
And so I am honoured, privileged, and gratified that you might be willing to share anything with me, but it would be grossly unfair, unethical, and immoral of me (or any therapist) to make you feel guilty or ashamed for choosing not to share.
What is getting in the way?
So, if you do find that you are unable to get into the swing of your therapy and “open up” with your therapist—and if you decide that it is indeed a problem for you—here are some “weird” and “crazy” thoughts, feelings, and perceptions that might be contributing to your difficulty.
Choice Paralysis and High Expectations
High expectations
First, in this age of science, therapists like to present therapy as being the pursuit of reasonable, rational, and realistic thinking. And yet, this pursuit of sensibility is itself surrounded by a pervasive mythology, in many cases bordering on woo-woo. One of these mythological beliefs is held by clients and therapists alike: every word spoken in therapy must be deep and profound and important.
If nothing else, that’s a pretty high bar to live up to, especially considering how mundane and repetitive most of day-to-day life can seem. And the fact that therapy is generally pretty expensive only makes this worse: it can feel like every “unimportant” word is wasting both time and money.
Choice Paralysis
On top of this, we all have so many thoughts, so many feelings, so many problems, and so much stress that it can seem impossible to know what is “really” important and what isn’t. Like trying to choose the “best” mustard from the 400 varieties on the shelf at the supermarket, when trying to decide the “best” thing to talk about in therapy you can easily get overwhelmed and paralysed by the “simple” act of choosing.
If you mix this endless choice together with the aforementioned need to be a mythically “perfect” client—adding in, perhaps, the 50 minute time limit, and a soupcon of anxiety that your therapist secretly thinks you’re stupid and boring—and you have a perfect recipe for “resistance.” In the reality of therapy, however, people often find that nattering about “unimportant” things is not only relaxing and helps them feel safe, but this “meaningless chatter” frequently uncovers something incredibly important to the problem that is bringing them into therapy in the first place.
Magical Incantation
Next we have perhaps the most “irrational,” but to my mind the most important feeling of the group: the fear that by speaking about an “unspeakable” event it will magically make Something Bad happen.
For example:
- The Bad Thing itself will be magically called forth and caused to happen, or to happen again.
- Some other, unrelated, Bad Thing will happen.
- Some Good Thing will be prevented from happening.
- The world, or society, or ourselves will explode, disintegrate, or fall apart.
We have all had experiences that we do not ever want to repeat, and we also all have ugly thoughts, wishes, and phantasies that one half of us wishes for and the other half is terrified would ever happen. We also all have emotions so powerful that we worry our heads or hearts might explode. And our memories and imagination can feel so real that we worry that these impossible things are in fact just about to happen. Just say the magic words…
Speak of the Devil and He Shall Appear
To put it another way, the words we speak have a kind of magic to them, and we often feel that just giving voice to a thought can make it come true. So much so that in spite of our “rational knowledge” that talking to therapist cannot make them happen or happen again, it still feels better not to take the chance.
To my mind, calling this feeling “irrational” in the pejorative, insulting sense is unfair. After all, In the real world, even the most “rational” people (lawyers, scientists, doctors, etc.) use the magical power of words, wishes, and curses to affect outcomes all the time—it’s a part of how we think and interact with the world. They use incantations to positive ends when knocking-on-wood, predicting experimental outcomes, hoping and praying, promising, pledging fealty, signing non-disclosure agreements, and making marital vows. On the other hand, they all also use magic words negatively and prohibitively when complaining, devising rules and laws, handing down advice, warnings, and thou-shalt-nots, and invoking divine intervention (“Heaven forbid!”).
In therapy, however, the fear of incantation has a special meaning because it usually connects to feelings, experiences, and expected events that have or will hurt us personally in some way. Just like the athlete who refuses to talk about an upcoming game for fear of “jinxing” it, people in psychotherapy are often afraid of jinxing the precarious emotional balance they have established for themselves and hurling themselves back into the abyss of suffering they have worked so hard to escape.
Therefore, the anti-incantation impulse—the impulse not to speak about a frightening thought or memory—is not a “crazy,” “irrational” thing we do because we are “neurotic.” Rather, it expresses a perfectly natural desire to protect ourselves from a physical danger and/or emotional pain we hope never to experience again.
Judgement and Objectification
Being treated as an object is a profoundly unpleasant experience. “Object” here can mean being used as a physical object, as in physical violence, rape, or sexual harassment. But it can also mean being treated as a psychological, scientific, or medical object, a thing to be studied, assessed, judged, and categorized.
For some people, being objectified and judged is not only emotionally destabilising, but is also the actual cause of their so-called “mental illness.” Many people find that the core of their PTSD, for example, is the fear of again finding themselves helplessly overpowered by an uncaring aggressor. And there are therapists and theorists, for example, who argue that conditions like “schizophrenia” and “schizoid personality disorder” are actually caused by a lifetime of being objectified (eg. having parents who treated her/him/them like a doll to be dressed up and manipulated).
Sadly, for a lot of people almost all of their previous experience with psychological care and intellectual training has been conducted within an objectifying context—that of observation, inspection, grading, correction, and diagnosis.
Doctors and psychiatrists, and to a lesser extent psychologists, are explicitly trained not to get “emotionally involved” with their patients and to maintain an attitude of “objectivity” at all times. This serves a purpose and there are one or two justifiable reasons for it, but unfortunately, what most people are actually looking for when they go to the doctor/psychiatrist for psychological help is emotional support. They are seeking the feeling of being taken care of by someone who understands and communicates emotionally, with particular emphasis on the word care.
Instead they are frequently met with objectifying measurements and dismissive treatments (eg. CBT homework and a bottle of pills), which only makes them feel misunderstood and rejected, and often makes their “illness” worse.
School teachers, too, although many are warm and supportive, are routinely required to objectify their students. Through standardized implements like homework, pop-quizzes, and end of year exams, one of a teacher’s major responsibilities is to ensure that their students “measure up” to expected standards.
For many future adults, this is a source of profound and lasting emotional distress, which only accelerates as they move into post-secondary education, and then explodes when they transition into the working world full of its depersonalising uniforms and business attire, repetitive tasks, performance reviews, sales quotas, productivity metrics, commissions-based compensation, and unreasonable expectations of continual growth.
When we begin therapy, we find ourselves sitting across from someone who in many ways closely resembles a teacher, doctor, and psychiatrist—the very people by whom we are most commonly objectified. And so, just being in the same room with the psychiatrist-like therapist, the fear of judgement and feeling of objectification can arise quite naturally for those who are sensitive to it.
Unfortunately, many psychotherapists actually see their role as being doctor-like, teacher-like, or boss-like, and so make things harder for their clients, and this may be what you’re picking up on. For example, in spite of the fact that most psychotherapists are not medical doctors or psychiatrists—and are therefore legally prohibited from officially diagnosing psychological “disorders”—they nevertheless begin their work with a new client by “assessing” them in terms of popular (but hugely problematic) diagnostic categories like Major Depression, Generalised Anxiety Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, and so on.
As a result, such a therapist begins each new therapy relationship by treating their client as an object—ignoring the person and focusing on the symptom—and thereby missing, rejecting, or dismissing the client’s need for emotional connection. This makes the therapist feel safe and in control, but leaves the client feeling disconnected and alone.
Obviously, this is emotionally hurtful, and it’s usually when and where psychotherapy fails. Objectification is a common complaint about Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, for example—which relies heavily on testing, homework, and paperwork, and listens to the client’s subjective story and emotions mostly as a means to symptom identification (ie. categorization and judgement). And the objectification is not only done by the therapist of/to the client—you are also actively encouraged to objectify yourself.
A lot of clients will tolerate this as long as their insurance is paying for it, but they often come away feeling disappointed and misunderstood. Obviously, this is the opposite of what we’re going for, and you’re right to be sensitive to being treated as an object in this way.
Shame and Punishment
Children are often ridiculed for crying, or sent to their rooms for being angry, or slapped and hit for being too exuberant or too rebellious. In teenage and adult life, many parents and partners still use physical violence to control emotions and behaviour, and even more teachers, bosses, social media “influencers,” and even random strangers will use non-violent, emotional means to coerce or punish us into doing, saying, and thinking what they want us to do, say, and think.
The challenge here is a subtle one. Many people come to learn that they should feel guilt and shame, not for expressing thoughts and feelings, but rather for having thoughts and feelings in the first place. They have been taught, incorrectly, that there is no difference between thoughts and actions, and so will feel profound and debilitating shame and guilt for having “bad” thoughts and feelings—even if they never express them and never act on them.
Thinking about eating an entire tub of ice-cream is not the same as actually eating an entire tub of ice-cream. And yet, we often feel as ashamed about wanting to punch someone as we would if we did actually punch them. In other words, we feel that the fact that we are capable of the “bad” thought means that we are by definition a “bad” person. Believing we are a bad person leads us to expect punishment for our “badness.”
To state my point clearly: thoughts and actions both exist, but they are not the same thing. Thoughts only become actions if you choose to act on them, and by choosing not to act on thoughts that might hurt others, you prove that you have nothing to be ashamed of—in fact, you have something to be proud of.
But from the thought-shame perspective, it is quite natural to resist the pressure to talk to a therapist about our various “badnesses.” Because we don’t want to be told that we are bad, and we don’t want to be punished for it with embarrassment and shame.
Thought-Reading and Being Transparent
For those with a history of invasive, controlling , and manipulative parenting and teaching, the above feeling of thought-crime can combine with a “paranoid” feeling that their private thoughts are visible to everyone around them. Shame then multiplies with shame because although they “know” they will be found out at any moment, nobody actually seems to notice. They thus feel as if they’re “getting away with it,” and live their lives waiting “the sky to fall,” or for “the hammer to drop.”
Enter the therapist, who not only closely resembles those objectifying, judgemental, and punishing authority figures from which punishment typically comes, but who also has the mythical, woo-woo reputation for being able to read minds and know what you are “really” thinking. Even in the least extreme version of this, it seems fair to expect that someone would be wary of even sitting in the same room as someone like that, much less engaging with them on an emotionally intimate level.
The Correct Thing to Feel
Emotions are a natural physiological response to the things that happen to us. They are meaningful signals which help us understand what is going on and allow us to remember how to deal with a situation we have experienced in the past. Emotions innately develop and become more nuanced as we mature, and with experience all kinds of feelings become associated with particular people, places, sounds, smells, colours, textures, thoughts, tones of voice, gestures, facial expressions, actions, events, and expectations.
People from the same culture may share a large number of these associations, and there may be a certain number of these which are common to all human beings, but the entire, specific constellation of your individual emotional network is utterly unique to you. In other words, there is no right or wrong way to feel about a particular situation, there is only the fact of the feeling itself as you experience it.
And yet, many people are convinced that there are rules which govern the “correct” way to feel about particular situations. Pop psychology abounds with incorrect and unfair interpretations of scientific research—much of which research is itself deeply flawed and problematic. Instagram is awash with injunctions to be “brave,” or “strong,” or “resilient.” TikTok accounts are full of rich and beautiful people telling us how to think and feel if we want to be as radiant and successful as they are. And there isn’t a religion in existence that doesn’t have some set of commandments forbidding us from lusting, or coveting, or being “greedy.”
From my perspective as a therapist, it’s easy to see how someone might expect me to act as an enforcer of these rules. I have spent the last decade studying psychology and training to be a therapist, so I should know the official rules, right? And people very frequently ask if it’s bad that they feel angry with their wife/husband/partner (Answer: No!), or if it’s OK to hate their parents (Answer: Yes!). Feelings are not actions, and can’t hurt anyone (even yourself), and so there is no such thing as a “good” or “bad,” or “correct” or “incorrect” feeling. How you decide to act is one thing, but what you feel is what you feel, period.
Cultural Gatekeeper
The image of the therapist as a moral gatekeeper is especially off-putting for people who “deviate” from the “norm” in some way. People of non-european descent often find the emphasis on individualism and the protestant/catholic flavoured morality of psychotherapy unnatural, uncomfortable, and often just plain wrong. Those of a non-hetero-normative sexual orientation or gender identity often struggle with therapy’s distressingly recent history of being used to force gay people into being straight and trans people into being cisgendered. Even people who simply come from more “emotionally expressive” cultures can find the emphasis on self-regulation and introspection restrictive and oppressive.
And this kind of social and moral instruction was, in fact and unfortunately, a part of the original formulation for Freud’s psychoanalysis—the basis for every kind of psychotherapy now practised. A significant part of his responsibility, as he saw it, was to help people get their “defects” and “neuroses” under control so that they could behave like good, orderly citizens—and in his view, the list of these “defects” was very long.
Although there are few therapists nowadays who are as openly paternalistic as Freud was, there are nevertheless a number of prominent therapeutic approaches and individual therapists who have this kind of controlling, correcting, and instructing vibe. Again, this may be what your spidey senses are picking up on.
Rejection, Exile, and Death
Rejection hurts, a lot, and being afraid of it is not crazy or irrational. Nor, in my opinion, is it a sign of a “mental disorder.” Like all of our most “irrational” thoughts and fears, there is a solid emotional logic behind the fear of rejection and it is perfectly sensible that people feel that fear and aversion as intensely as they do.
Amongst many other things, being rejected by one person implies the threat of being rejected by everybody. The feeling of belonging in the world, and especially of being cared for and about by the people you yourself care about—-this is a part of the bedrock of self-esteem and emotional stability. Even on the most pragmatic level, there are very few people who are able to physically survive in exile. And so total social rejection not only guarantees suffering, but also threatens death.
So, the fear of the pain of rejection is not some irrational “oversensitivity” which marks you out as crazy or mentally ill. Quite the opposite, fear of rejection simply reflects how vulnerable we all are when we can’t find somewhere to belong.
But, again because psychotherapists appear to be “experts” who know and speak “the Truth”— and because the Myth of Therapy includes the therapist’s mystical ability to read your mind and “know what you’re really thinking”—for some people their therapist can represent the threat of ultimate rejection.
To put it a bit more clearly: It is very common for people to feel that their personality and emotions are too big, or too confusing, or too overwhelming, or too unacceptable—too much—for anyone else to tolerate. And if even a psychotherapist can’t handle you, and has to reject you, well… it means you are now a Reject, officially and irrevocably.
I can’t think of anyone who would approach that happily and without at least some trepidation.
Themes
As you can see, there are certain themes that emerge when looking at the internal experience of starting psychotherapy. Authority, mind-reading, judgement and objectification, predicting the future, being fundamentally a “bad” or “wrong” or “incorrect” person. Being unacceptable, unwanted, unlovable, too much, too weird, too “irrational.”
It’s no surprise that these themes are important to new clients and interfere with their ability to participate. These are big, important, painful feelings that we are naturally disposed to avoiding. But not just because they hurt. They hurt because they are important, that’s what emotional pain means: something bad is happening, and I don’t like it. Naturally, what that Something Bad is, depends on your personal history, but everyone has Bad Things they never want to experience again.
Your therapist is about to become an important person in your life who will have direct access (if you choose to give it) to your innermost self. They will influence your thoughts, emotions, and experience, and you don’t yet know what they’re going to do with that influence. So yeah, you want to be careful not to let the wrong person in.
The Person of the Therapist
A therapist is a human being first and a mental health professional second. This means that behind all of the kindness and good intentions, they nevertheless embody the same potential for confusion and pain that we have experienced in relationship to other human beings. In our first therapy sessions, we have not yet learned—emotionally, physiologically, and unconsciously—that our therapist has truly learned (hopefully!) how to minimize their negative impact on people.
As I said at the outset, there is nothing wrong with feeling any of the above feelings, they’re what you’re supposed to feel when you are vulnerable. Hopefully, however, they will pass, and in time and you will eventually become comfortable. In my experience as both a client and therapist, working through the discomfort and learning to trust your therapist is an immensely important part of psychotherapy. But it is not always easy, nor should we expect it to be.
Client-Therapist Mismatch
While it is true that learning trust is central to therapy, it’s also important to say that your “resistant” feelings might not be abating because you’re working with the wrong person, or doing the wrong kind of therapy. We all have people in our lives—and often in our families—with whom we simply don’t get along. The missing spark, the wrong wavelength, the irritating miscommunications and misunderstandings, the feeling that they just don’t get you and you don’t get them—all of these things happen in therapy too.
If these feelings persist, and you just can’t seem to get rid of them, then maybe perceiving something outside of yourself—something between you and your therapist that just doesn’t work. This is something I would in fact encourage you to talk to your therapist about, as uncomfortable as it might be—but you are absolutely within your rights to honour your intuition and find someone who is a better fit.
Therapy is not for Everyone
There are all kinds of psychotherapy, and so it’s a common belief that there must be a modality that will fit everyone—with the implication that there’s something wrong with you if you can’t find “the right” therapy for you. I want to challenge this view and say that therapy simply does not work for some people. And, you might be one of those people.
Admittedly, the impulse to say that therapy “just doesn’t work for me” can come from an emotional anxiety which could well benefit from the sort of working relationship that therapy offers, but this argument itself has the potential to be used in a coercive way. Ultimately, the point remains the same whether you adore psychotherapy or loathe it—participation is 100% your decision. And I mean it quite sincerely when I say that maybe what you need is to learn to play the drums, or get a new job, or find a rabbi, a Zen master, or a new friend.
Emotions are Complicated
The magic of being human is that our emotions, memories, and imaginations are so incredibly powerful. The creative faculties that dream up comic book characters, or jetpacks, or poptarts, or quantum physics are the same ones that create all of our “irrational” thoughts and feelings. But sometimes those thoughts and feelings become so powerful that they start to interfere with your ability to live and have relationships with other people. As far as I’m concerned, that is the only metric that matters.
So, to conclude, I want to reiterate (yet again) that nothing in therapy is obligatory, nor are any of the above thoughts and feelings obligatory. You might experience all of them, or you might experience none of them, and those who do are not any “crazier” than those who don’t.
Which is to say: in my experience, the “resistance” that many feel to therapy is in fact perfectly sensible—particularly if you have a history of abuse, manipulation, or objectification. Our “irrational” feelings are simply an attempt to creatively predict and prepare for whichever negative outcome seems most probable or that we most want to prevent. The fact that your therapist believes themselves to be a safe and trustworthy person, does not mean that you have to agree with them. Being circumspect is perfectly healthy and “rational.”
And when you’ve found the right therapist and feel ready to talk about the things they make you feel, you’ll discover that the feelings that make you distrust your therapist are literally the exact feelings that the weird rules and boundaries of therapy are deliberately designed to let you talk about and work through in a safe, healthy way. In other words, there may be no one in your outside life who will know so much about you and let you know so little, but there is also probably no one else who will be happy when you tell them how deeply you loathe, fear, and distrust them!
