September 9, 2025 • 8 mins
[Rerun] This is the first deep dive in the Loneliness Deep Dive Series. (Intro) The full episode is available to patrons of the podcast.
This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/KIRK to get 10% off your first month.
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June 12, 2020
The Psychology In Seattle Podcast ®
Trigger Warning: This episode may include topics such as assault, trauma, and discrimination. If necessary, listeners are encouraged to refrain from listening and care for their safety and well-being.
Disclaimer: The content provided is for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only. Nothing here constitutes personal or professional consultation, therapy, diagnosis, or creates a counselor-client relationship. Topics discussed may generate differing points of view. If you participate (by being a guest, submitting a question, or commenting) you must do so with the knowledge that we cannot control reactions or responses from others, which may not agree with you or feel unfair. Your participation on this site is at your own risk, accepting full responsibility for any liability or harm that may result. Anything you write here may be used for discussion or endorsement of the podcast. Opinions and views expressed by the host and guest hosts are personal views. Although, we take precautions and fact check, they should not be considered facts and the opinions may change. Opinions posted by participants (such as comments) are not those of the hosts. Readers should not rely on any information found here and should perform due diligence before taking any action. For a more extensive description of factors for you to consider, please see www.psychologyinseattle.com
This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/KIRK to get 10% off your first month.
Become a member: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOUZWV1DRtHtpP2H48S7iiw/join
Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/PsychologyInSeattle
Email: https://www.psychologyinseattle.com/contact
Website: https://www.psychologyinseattle.com
Merch: https://psychologyinseattle-shop.fourthwall.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/psychologyinseattle/
Facebook Official Page: https://www.facebook.com/PsychologyInSeattle/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@kirk.honda
June 12, 2020
The Psychology In Seattle Podcast ®
Trigger Warning: This episode may include topics such as assault, trauma, and discrimination. If necessary, listeners are encouraged to refrain from listening and care for their safety and well-being.
Disclaimer: The content provided is for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only. Nothing here constitutes personal or professional consultation, therapy, diagnosis, or creates a counselor-client relationship. Topics discussed may generate differing points of view. If you participate (by being a guest, submitting a question, or commenting) you must do so with the knowledge that we cannot control reactions or responses from others, which may not agree with you or feel unfair. Your participation on this site is at your own risk, accepting full responsibility for any liability or harm that may result. Anything you write here may be used for discussion or endorsement of the podcast. Opinions and views expressed by the host and guest hosts are personal views. Although, we take precautions and fact check, they should not be considered facts and the opinions may change. Opinions posted by participants (such as comments) are not those of the hosts. Readers should not rely on any information found here and should perform due diligence before taking any action. For a more extensive description of factors for you to consider, please see www.psychologyinseattle.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, deserving listeners. Today's episode is going to be a long,
long episode. It's a deep dive that I've been working
on for a few months now, and the deep dive
is on avoidant personality disorder. This is going to be
a patron only episode, by the way, so if you're
not a patron, you won't be able to listen to
(00:20):
the full episode. This is the first episode in a
series that I'm going to be doing on loneliness in general.
Lots of people suffer from loneliness. I get emails about
it almost every day. I talk with clients about it.
I talk with supervisors and students about it. Loneliness is
(00:42):
very I don't know, it's highly prevalent, and I've never
felt very good in the way that I help people
with their loneliness. I've found some success with some people,
but with a lot of people when I try to
help them, it never really works, especially when people email
me because I don't have a lot, they're not clients
(01:04):
and I can't really get into it with them. And
I've come to realize that the typical advice that people
give about reducing loneliness is useless, like telling people to,
you know, just get out there. Just get out there,
be yourself, you know, try to make friends, cultivate relationships,
maybe dating apps or Facebook groups or you know, you
(01:25):
have to pursue your friends, cultivate long term relationships, reach
out to others. Sometimes you got to put up with
flaky friends. Maybe always say yes to social events, or
be vulnerable. You know. All this is good advice, but
I've worked with people individually with this kind of thing
and found that it doesn't do anything. None of these
(01:45):
things have really worked. Sometimes they do, but you know,
most people that I talk about these things with, they
just remain lonely year after year after year. And it
makes me really really sad for them. Because these people
that I know, I know to be lovely, likable, interesting,
(02:08):
dynamic human beings who anyone would be happy to have
to be have their friend. I often think about, because
I have multiple people telling me that they're lonely, I
often think about, well, how come all those people don't
just get together and eliminate all their loneliness all at once.
Well it's not that simple. As what I have found,
(02:31):
it is not easy to eliminate loneliness in your life.
It is usually perceived as a very simple thing, We'll
just make friends, just build friends. It is not that simple.
There are so many different things that can get in
the way of curing your own loneliness. There are so
many different things that can hamper one's efforts to reduce loneliness.
(02:55):
There are so many different things that can create gravitational
pull towards loneliness. So I decided to really look into
all the different types of loneliness. You know, as long
term listeners know, I love doing deep dives, and I
have a long list of things that I want to
do deep dives on. And this just really stuck out
(03:18):
because of how common I get this question of I
can't seem to keep friends, or I try to have
groups of friends and I see other people being friends
with each other and I don't have that, Or when
I'm in social situations, I get real anxious, or I
(03:39):
don't think anyone is capable of really liking me. You know,
There's just so many different types of loneliness, and so
I want to look into all the different types of loneliness.
And this is the first episode, and it's just one
tiny percentage piece of the pie about loneliness, which is
called avoidant personality. Disorder. Other topics that I want to
look into around loneliness are social anxiety, which is very common.
(04:04):
I also want to look into how our culture is
becoming more and more isolated from each other. I want
to look into schizoid personality disorder. I want to revisit,
which I've visited in the past in cells, involuntary syllabates, migtau,
men going their own way, and the pickup artist community.
I want to look into schizotypal personality disorder, depression schemas
(04:28):
that impeded one's ability to make and keep friends, people
who lack social skills. What are social skills exactly? Seattle
Freeze people have been asking me to go into the
Seattle Freeze for since the beginning of this podcast. If
you're not familiar, the Seattle freeze is this notion that
in Seattle it's very cold socially, and that when people
(04:49):
move to Seattle they have a really hard time making
friends because they feel frozen out of relationships. And as
someone who's lived in Seattle his whole life myself, I
don't really see that. I find Seattle people to be
very warm. I'd like to consider myself to be very warm.
But what does the data show? What? Why would Seattle
(05:11):
have that perception? If it is true, why would that
be I also want to look into autism spectrum, how
that can contribute to loneliness ADHD, how to make I
just want to talk about, generally speaking, how do you
make friends and how do you keep them. I want
to look at attachment styles avoid an attachment. In particular,
(05:32):
I want to talk about how do you meet your
soulmate and keep them because a lot of people are lonely,
not just for friends, but for a soulmate and companion.
I also want to conclude the whole deep dive by
just talking about loneliness in general. That's my end goal
is I want to do deep dives on all these topics.
It's going to take me a while to get through
all of them, I think, but I want to do
(05:53):
all these different Probably I don't know. It looks like
fifteen different deep dives. And at the end, as I
learn and do all this research, I want to conclude
with a final episode on pulling it all together. Because
a lot of this has to do with my own
desire to get a good handle on what loneliness is
(06:16):
in general, the different types and how to really help
people when they email me about this, that I would
be able to say, well, here are some things that
I've learned as a distillation of everything that I've read,
all the research, and all the thinking that I've done
about this. And of course listen to the Loneliness Deep
Dive episodes, and particularly the last one, because that's when
(06:37):
I pull it all together. I'm also guessing that as
I research this topic, there are going to be other
subtopics that will emerge that I haven't thought of, and
I'll do deep dives on those episodes as well. So again,
this episode is just for patrons of the podcast, So
if you're not a patron, this episode will end soon
(06:57):
before the content begins. You want to listen to this
whole episode along with all the other deep dives, and
along with all the other deep dives that I've ever done.
You've done hundreds of deep dives that are arguably our
best episodes. You have to become a patron of the
podcast by going to patreon dot com. That's patreon dot com.
Go to our page Psychology and Seattle and become a patron.
(07:20):
And when you become a patron, you'll get instructions on
how to access this episode and the hundreds of other
Patreon only episodes. If you are a patron and you're
on YouTube, you might not know this, but you can
listen to Patreon episodes Patreon only episodes on Patreon dot com.
They're there every time as they're getting posted. You can
also listen on our website. There's a way to access
(07:40):
them on our website as a patron, and you can
also subscribe to the patren feed on a phone podcatcher,
on a phone app that's designed for podcasts listening. So
there's Those are the three different ways patreon dot com,
website and your phone podcatcher to access premium episodes. But
you only have access to that through your Patreon membership.
(08:03):
And as always, if you have trouble accessing it, go
to go to psychology said dot com, click on the
contact page, and we're here to help you get access
to premium premium episodes. So again, if you're not a patron,
this episode is gonna end, and I apologize for that.
You know, I get that you're gonna if you're not
(08:24):
a patron, this is gonna upset you. But this is
how I make a living
Hey, deserving listeners. Today's episode is going to be a long,
long episode. It's a deep dive that I've been working
on for a few months now, and the deep dive
is on avoidant personality disorder. This is going to be
a patron only episode, by the way, so if you're
not a patron, you won't be able to listen to
(00:20):
the full episode. This is the first episode in a
series that I'm going to be doing on loneliness in general.
Lots of people suffer from loneliness. I get emails about
it almost every day. I talk with clients about it.
I talk with supervisors and students about it. Loneliness is
(00:42):
very I don't know, it's highly prevalent, and I've never
felt very good in the way that I help people
with their loneliness. I've found some success with some people,
but with a lot of people when I try to
help them, it never really works, especially when people email
me because I don't have a lot, they're not clients
(01:04):
and I can't really get into it with them. And
I've come to realize that the typical advice that people
give about reducing loneliness is useless, like telling people to,
you know, just get out there. Just get out there,
be yourself, you know, try to make friends, cultivate relationships,
maybe dating apps or Facebook groups or you know, you
(01:25):
have to pursue your friends, cultivate long term relationships, reach
out to others. Sometimes you got to put up with
flaky friends. Maybe always say yes to social events, or
be vulnerable. You know. All this is good advice, but
I've worked with people individually with this kind of thing
and found that it doesn't do anything. None of these
(01:45):
things have really worked. Sometimes they do, but you know,
most people that I talk about these things with, they
just remain lonely year after year after year. And it
makes me really really sad for them. Because these people
that I know, I know to be lovely, likable, interesting,
(02:08):
dynamic human beings who anyone would be happy to have
to be have their friend. I often think about, because
I have multiple people telling me that they're lonely, I
often think about, well, how come all those people don't
just get together and eliminate all their loneliness all at once.
Well it's not that simple. As what I have found,
(02:31):
it is not easy to eliminate loneliness in your life.
It is usually perceived as a very simple thing, We'll
just make friends, just build friends. It is not that simple.
There are so many different things that can get in
the way of curing your own loneliness. There are so
many different things that can hamper one's efforts to reduce loneliness.
(02:55):
There are so many different things that can create gravitational
pull towards loneliness. So I decided to really look into
all the different types of loneliness. You know, as long
term listeners know, I love doing deep dives, and I
have a long list of things that I want to
do deep dives on. And this just really stuck out
(03:18):
because of how common I get this question of I
can't seem to keep friends, or I try to have
groups of friends and I see other people being friends
with each other and I don't have that, Or when
I'm in social situations, I get real anxious, or I
(03:39):
don't think anyone is capable of really liking me. You know,
There's just so many different types of loneliness, and so
I want to look into all the different types of loneliness.
And this is the first episode, and it's just one
tiny percentage piece of the pie about loneliness, which is
called avoidant personality. Disorder. Other topics that I want to
look into around loneliness are social anxiety, which is very common.
(04:04):
I also want to look into how our culture is
becoming more and more isolated from each other. I want
to look into schizoid personality disorder. I want to revisit,
which I've visited in the past in cells, involuntary syllabates, migtau,
men going their own way, and the pickup artist community.
I want to look into schizotypal personality disorder, depression schemas
(04:28):
that impeded one's ability to make and keep friends, people
who lack social skills. What are social skills exactly? Seattle
Freeze people have been asking me to go into the
Seattle Freeze for since the beginning of this podcast. If
you're not familiar, the Seattle freeze is this notion that
in Seattle it's very cold socially, and that when people
(04:49):
move to Seattle they have a really hard time making
friends because they feel frozen out of relationships. And as
someone who's lived in Seattle his whole life myself, I
don't really see that. I find Seattle people to be
very warm. I'd like to consider myself to be very warm.
But what does the data show? What? Why would Seattle
(05:11):
have that perception? If it is true, why would that
be I also want to look into autism spectrum, how
that can contribute to loneliness ADHD, how to make I
just want to talk about, generally speaking, how do you
make friends and how do you keep them. I want
to look at attachment styles avoid an attachment. In particular,
(05:32):
I want to talk about how do you meet your
soulmate and keep them because a lot of people are lonely,
not just for friends, but for a soulmate and companion.
I also want to conclude the whole deep dive by
just talking about loneliness in general. That's my end goal
is I want to do deep dives on all these topics.
It's going to take me a while to get through
all of them, I think, but I want to do
(05:53):
all these different Probably I don't know. It looks like
fifteen different deep dives. And at the end, as I
learn and do all this research, I want to conclude
with a final episode on pulling it all together. Because
a lot of this has to do with my own
desire to get a good handle on what loneliness is
(06:16):
in general, the different types and how to really help
people when they email me about this, that I would
be able to say, well, here are some things that
I've learned as a distillation of everything that I've read,
all the research, and all the thinking that I've done
about this. And of course listen to the Loneliness Deep
Dive episodes, and particularly the last one, because that's when
(06:37):
I pull it all together. I'm also guessing that as
I research this topic, there are going to be other
subtopics that will emerge that I haven't thought of, and
I'll do deep dives on those episodes as well. So again,
this episode is just for patrons of the podcast, So
if you're not a patron, this episode will end soon
(06:57):
before the content begins. You want to listen to this
whole episode along with all the other deep dives, and
along with all the other deep dives that I've ever done.
You've done hundreds of deep dives that are arguably our
best episodes. You have to become a patron of the
podcast by going to patreon dot com. That's patreon dot com.
Go to our page Psychology and Seattle and become a patron.
(07:20):
And when you become a patron, you'll get instructions on
how to access this episode and the hundreds of other
Patreon only episodes. If you are a patron and you're
on YouTube, you might not know this, but you can
listen to Patreon episodes Patreon only episodes on Patreon dot com.
They're there every time as they're getting posted. You can
also listen on our website. There's a way to access
(07:40):
them on our website as a patron, and you can
also subscribe to the patren feed on a phone podcatcher,
on a phone app that's designed for podcasts listening. So
there's Those are the three different ways patreon dot com,
website and your phone podcatcher to access premium episodes. But
you only have access to that through your Patreon membership.
(08:03):
And as always, if you have trouble accessing it, go
to go to psychology said dot com, click on the
contact page, and we're here to help you get access
to premium premium episodes. So again, if you're not a patron,
this episode is gonna end, and I apologize for that.
You know, I get that you're gonna if you're not
(08:24):
a patron, this is gonna upset you. But this is
how I make a living
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