I did what chase said and it worked...

[Dough]

I hate to trauma dump like this but I genuinely have nobody to talk to about it... so...

After that infamous post I made where chase put me on blast and said to stop thinking and focus exclusively on doing until I got tangible results and that everything would "fall into place" (or something to that effect), I went and did that. I moved to the city where there were more people and I immediately started a basic college course for no purpose other than to force me to have daily exposure to a lot of people. Well, it worked. My issue was just not meeting enough girls fast enough. I'm currently right now dating a girl who is nearly all I could've asked for. But this doesn't feel like a victory. I feel worse than I ever have. No, putting my dick in her pussy didn't fix it. Here's why:

For context, when I was 15, a hispanic girl was into me and I was proxy asked me if I would fuck her. I said "When she's legal, sure." They thought I was saying I disliked her while making a bad taste joke about illegal immigration. No, I just genuinely thought it was illegal to have sex until you were an adult. I was 15, take a moment to let that sink in.

I'm 24 now. Through my entire life I've felt a constant low-level stress about needing to feel loved. I'd say it's probably related to my slow social development, but I'm not sure because I can remember it even in my oldest memories of kindergarten. Some days it would be all I could think about, but most of the time I could distract myself from it. Either way, when I finished highschool I started busting my ass to make up for lost time learning social skills for the sole purpose of quenching that desire. I had literally nothing else motivating me, and still don't. Every day I would think to myself "it's ok, once I get my social skills figured out and I meet the right girl it will go away and I can finally stop having every emotion tainted by this feeling of hollowness."
(Note: I've had plenty of male friends for years and we do stuff nearly every day, so it's not a simple social isolation problem)

But you know, I still have that need to feel loved that disrupts my daily life. Because apparently that's not achievable? I can't trust that this girl actually loves me because she'll just leave when she randomly decides that she wants kids 5 years from now? Apparently women can't love me for me, and can only love me as a vehicle to produce children? I can't imagine living the rest of my life with this constant pain in my chest. I had a suicidal thought for the first time in my life laying in bed just now, which triggered me (pun intended this time...) to get up and write this. I don't know what to do. I feel like the biggest rug in the world was yanked out from under me.

 

[TestY]

But you know, I still have that need to feel loved that disrupts my daily life. Because apparently that's not achievable? I can't trust that this girl actually loves me because she'll just leave when she randomly decides that she wants kids 5 years from now?

The desire or even need to feel loved is quite common, and is actually affirmed as a worthy goal in quite a bit of psychotherapy. However, this desire usually has something passive and victim-like about it. Humanistic psychologist Nathaniel Branden calls it an expression of "passivity". In my opinion, the healthy approach to meeting one's social needs is to build mutually loving/cooperative relations by loving/caring about others first. So relations in themselves are not enough - it depends on the quality of those relations.


Dale Carnegie quotes psychologist Alfred Adler in his book «How to stop worrying and start Living»:

«Here is the most astonishing statement that I ever read from the pen of a great psychiatrist. This statement was made by Alfred Adler. He used to say to his melancholia patients: "You can be cured in fourteen days if you follow this prescription. Try to think every day how you can please someone."» That statement sounds so incredible that I feel I ought to try to explain it by quoting a couple of pages from Dr. Adler's splendid book, What Life Should Mean to You.

I tell them: 'You can be cured in fourteen days if you follow this prescription. Try to think every day how you can please someone.' See what this means to them. They are occupied with the thought. 'How can I worry someone.' The answers are very interesting. Some say: 'This will be very easy for me. I have done it all my life.' They have never done it. I ask them to think it over. They do not think it over. I tell them: 'You can make use of all the time you spend when you are unable to go to sleep by thinking how you can please someone, and it will be a big step forward in your health.' When I see them next day, I ask them: 'Did you think over what I suggested?' They answer: 'Last night I went to sleep as soon as I got to bed.'

The most important task imposed by religion has always been 'Love thy neighbour'. ... It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow man who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from among such individuals that all human failures spring. ... All that we demand of a human being, and the highest praise we can give him is that he should be a good fellow worker, a friend to all other men, and a true partner in love and marriage." Dr. Adler urges us to do a good deed every day

«It is almost impossible to exaggerate the value of an increase in social feeling. The mind improves, for intelligence is a communal function.
The feeling of worth and value is heightened, giving courage and an optimistic view, and there is a sense of acquiescence in the common advantages and drawbacks of our lot. The individual feels at home in life and feels his existence to be worthwhile just so far as he is useful to others and is overcoming common, instead of private, feelings of in feriority. Not only the ethical nature, but the right attitude in aesthetics, the best understanding of the beautiful and the ugly, will always be founded upon the truest social feeling.

Tony Robbins uses a similar approach in his "Notes from a Friend":

My secret was focusing on the needs of other people. I constantly asked the question “How can I add something of value to people’s lives?” Through this thought process, I became a leader. I realized early on that I couldn’t help others change if I couldn’t change myself. Not only was the secret to living giving, but to give, I had to become a better person

Chase has a good article that ties in with this as well:

Later I read in Leil Lowndes' wonderful book How to Talk to Anyone the great piece of advice that you should be as warm toward everyone you meet as if he or she was an old friend.

In sum, we can resolve this problem by adopting an individualistic humanistic point of view, where we first bring value and goodwill to other people. This will ensure our own happiness - and positive relations.

 

[Chase]

Yo @Dough,

So, congrats on getting into action.

I can’t tell if this is “wrong solution for wrong problem” or if you just need to get more experience and get those early jitters out.

I know when I got my first girlfriend I was freaking out about her leaving. Kind of always worried about it until the relationship actually DID end after a few years. But then every girlfriend I have had since, I haven’t really worried about it. Probably thanks to reaching that point where I realized, “Oh, wait. I can actually pretty easily get more girlfriend caliber girls. So the first one wasn’t a fluke.”

Of course the other consideration here is if this is some deep-seated issue you have where you’re just ravenous for love all the time, constantly worried about what’ll happen next, fear of abandonment issues crop up, and then you self-sabotage your relationships and turn them into a self-fulfilling prophecy (so afraid she’ll leave you that you act clingy and jealous, stifle her, and drive her away, reinforcing the core fear).

If it’s the latter, it probably requires a therapist and quite possibly dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) and is beyond the ability of anyone to guide you through on a free forum.

If it’s just the former though… well, man, stop rushing! Don’t worry, you’ll get your forever relationship eventually. No need to rush there. You sound like you’re desperate to be 50 years old with a post-menopausal wife who’ll never leave you to have children with somebody else. Take your time. You’ve got a lot of life to live before you get there.

This relationship is a training wheels relationship. It’ll end… sooner or later. You can spend all the time between then and now fretting about when and how the axe will drop, or you can spend all that time enjoying the girl, enjoying the relationship, learning from it, and growing, so you can have more secure, more confident relationships in the future after her.

A life of incessant worries and another life of taking things as they come still both end up at largely the same destination.

Chase

 

[TestY]

I know when I got my first girlfriend I was freaking out about her leaving. Kind of always worried about it until the relationship actually DID end after a few years. But then every girlfriend I have had since, I haven’t really worried about it. Probably thanks to reaching that point where I realized, “Oh, wait. I can actually pretty easily get more girlfriend caliber girls. So the first one wasn’t a fluke.”

Word.

If it’s the latter, it probably requires a therapist and quite possibly dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) and is beyond the ability of anyone to guide you through on a free forum.

Hey dude, are you taking a jab at my post? ; ) Just kidding...

It all comes down to view and problem conceptualization in my opinion. Sometimes even deeper problems like low self-worth and low efficacy/depression can be tackled by a cognitive approach, as seen in Martin Seligman's "Learned Optimism", and in your "How to Overcome Depression". We are not flawed, but we may hold the view that we are. That being said - one should of course always consult professional help if one is suicidal.

 

[POB]

Do some therapy.
24 is usually the worst age to be a man, especially these days.
Young guns don't have no rite of passage, decent role models or veteran support anymore.
Therapy will def help you find your path forward.

https://www.amazon.com.br/Mans-Search-Meaning-Harold-Kushner/dp/0807014273
Also read this ^^^

 

[Dough]

I know when I got my first girlfriend I was freaking out about her leaving. Kind of always worried about it until the relationship actually DID end after a few years. But then every girlfriend I have had since, I haven’t really worried about it. Probably thanks to reaching that point where I realized, “Oh, wait. I can actually pretty easily get more girlfriend caliber girls. So the first one wasn’t a fluke.”

I'm not worried about my ability to replace her. I trust myself and I trust my abilities. I did it once and I can do it again. It's that I don't want to replace her. I want to get into a situation where I can feel secure that yes, this is a person that I can trust and enjoy for the foreseeable future. That this is a person that I can plan my life around, barring any failures on my own part. Here I'll put it with a metaphor: I don't enjoy sand castles.

This is leftover unresolved crap from a past post where I was told that love is simply a way for women to get tricked into procreating and it totally shattered my worldview, because I was under the impression for my entire life that there was something more to it than merely "brain chemicals make girl want have baby, if no baby then no brain chemicals, bye bye no more girl". Certainly for me procreation is completely detached from anything of the topic. I thought it would be similar for others and that I wasn't just a freak or whatever.

The only reason I didn't make a post asking specifically about it at the time is because I was told to shut up and execute.

 

[Chase]

Well man, you need to make peace with life. Right now it looks like you’re fighting this whole war against nature and the way of the world in this mad scramble for unconditional love you have.

It is obvious that you yearn and hunger for love not tied to anything you do for another person, but simply to be loved as you are without condition. You don’t want children because a child would detract from the love a woman has for you. You don’t want a woman who wants children with you because then (in your eyes) she is just using you to get to a child. You want a woman who is going to sit there with her fingers laced between yours, staring into your eyes, devoted to you, forever, for no other reason than that you’re YOU.

There IS such a thing as unconditional love, but you can only find it with God. Here on the flesh and blood realm, you are surrounded by mortals, as weak in the flesh as you are, and their love is conditional.

YOUR love is conditional. You’re not seeking a gay man to love. You’re not loving a dog or a cactus or a sea sponge. You’re not even loving a 40 y/o woman (I would guess) who is well past the baby rabies stage, approaching menopause, and very well could be the PERFECT partner for a guy who wants a woman who will never leave him and always love him and never want to have children with him (because she can’t!). You want a woman who is what you want, who has the traits and characteristics you want, but you want her to love you without condition and without end.

You are seeking God, in young human female form.

I don’t know what your relationship experience is. It’s quite murky here. Now you are saying you have had a girl leave, and replaced her. It’s not clear to me how far along these relationships get, or what you’re doing in them. Are you having sex with these girls at all? How long are these relationships lasting? I half get the impression you are asexual, but not aromantic, but that you keep dating girls who are sexuals and when the girl realizes you’re not going to have sex she falls out of love and leaves. If you are asexual, you should be dating asexual girls, NOT sexuals. Go on the Asexuality forum and meet people there if so. There are plenty of women who are asexual but not aromantic, looking for romances without sex or children.

Regardless, whatever the thing you’re seeking, there are women out there who seek it too.

Probably 3% of the female population doesn’t want or care about having children, and will NEVER want or care about it. I know a married couple right now, been married 9 years, almost 40, still no kids. Probably never having kids. Who knows why, they don’t talk about it. But regardless, they’re still happy together and obviously get on very well.

You can find women in their 20s with tubal ligations who can’t ever have children.

You can find women in their 20s who are autistic, which in my experience often don’t want/care about kids and don’t change their minds the way non-autistic women do.

You can find women in their mid-30s who are past the baby rabies stage, still single, and are confident they don’t ever want children — and who are also as desperate to settle down into forever marriage as you are.

The women you want are out there. Are you using that childfree dating app? Going to childfree meetups? Chatting up women on the childfree Reddit board — it seems to be more women there than men?

But beyond screening better for more appropriate partners, you need to get your mind right.

A therapist is almost certainly crucial for you, just to help you work through these issues you have around love.

More than that though, it sounds like what you are really seeking is not a woman, but God.

Chase

 

[Lantern]

I'm going give a bit of a contrarian suggestion, although I agree with almost everything Chase and the others said.

I'm not so sure the OP needs therapy. He might. But what he needs is his balls to drop.

Man. The fuck. Up.

It sounds harsh, but what I'm getting from the guy is a big need for validation, love, comforting, whatever you want to call it. That's for women and children. Men's destiny is to earn respect, not receive free floating love. That ends when you become an adult, although you might get still a bit of that from mom, but if you want to reach a point where you will feel good about yourself, you need to grow up.

It's a choice. Remain a child seeking love and validation, and I guarantee you will never get it in the way you want, or kill this personality you have, accept that there are no guarantees in life, that it's all one big, long constant struggle with ever changing circumstances of your life, and become a man. And you know what, if you do, you'll find within you the love for battle that sits dormant in all of us. But you have to give up your childish wishes to have a replacement-for-mother's-love girlfriend constantly give you assurance and tell you she loves you in baby speak. One, it will disgust her. Two, YOU are the one who should be assuring HER. Three, she will eventually see you as weak, and dump you. Know what's funny? When she dumps you, she'll still love you. But you'll have lost her respect.

I want to get into a situation where I can feel secure that yes, this is a person that I can trust and enjoy for the foreseeable future.

Nope. Never happens. Life doesn't work like that. Not with women, not with anything. This is a desire you need to drop and accept that you'll never be secure. Or rather, you'll never be secure about a particular person/thing, but in the long run, you are secure, because if one girl leaves, there'll be another. If one job sucks, you'll find another. If one business venture fails, you'll start another. Etc.

The reason I say therapy might not be the best choice, at least talk therapy, is that it's a feminine way to solve things, by talking and emoting. Again, it might help. But men heal from action, not talk. I didn't man up from therapy, I did it from taking on challenges in life and both achieving and getting my ass handed to me. So I'd suggest you start modeling actually masculine men, go take action, see that you can fail and be ok, get some scars from life, and develop a love for this uncertain, confusing life we have to lead. There's no security, there's no saftey, but by god, you never feel so alive like when you jump into the fray and live life fully despite all that. And if you truly do it, you'll be a magnet for women. Because it's damn sure in short supply.

 

[HoofHearted]

Well man, you need to make peace with life. Right now it looks like you’re fighting this whole war against nature and the way of the world in this mad scramble for unconditional love you have.

It is obvious that you yearn and hunger for love not tied to anything you do for another person, but simply to be loved as you are without condition. You don’t want children because a child would detract from the love a woman has for you. You don’t want a woman who wants children with you because then (in your eyes) she is just using you to get to a child. You want a woman who is going to sit there with her fingers laced between yours, staring into your eyes, devoted to you, forever, for no other reason than that you’re YOU.

There IS such a thing as unconditional love, but you can only find it with God. Here on the flesh and blood realm, you are surrounded by mortals, as weak in the flesh as you are, and their love is conditional.

YOUR love is conditional. You’re not seeking a gay man to love. You’re not loving a dog or a cactus or a sea sponge. You’re not even loving a 40 y/o woman (I would guess) who is well past the baby rabies stage, approaching menopause, and very well could be the PERFECT partner for a guy who wants a woman who will never leave him and always love him and never want to have children with him (because she can’t!). You want a woman who is what you want, who has the traits and characteristics you want, but you want her to love you without condition and without end.

You are seeking God, in young human female form.

I don’t know what your relationship experience is. It’s quite murky here. Now you are saying you have had a girl leave, and replaced her. It’s not clear to me how far along these relationships get, or what you’re doing in them. Are you having sex with these girls at all? How long are these relationships lasting? I half get the impression you are asexual, but not aromantic, but that you keep dating girls who are sexuals and when the girl realizes you’re not going to have sex she falls out of love and leaves. If you are asexual, you should be dating asexual girls, NOT sexuals. Go on the Asexuality forum and meet people there if so. There are plenty of women who are asexual but not aromantic, looking for romances without sex or children.

Regardless, whatever the thing you’re seeking, there are women out there who seek it too.

Probably 3% of the female population doesn’t want or care about having children, and will NEVER want or care about it. I know a married couple right now, been married 9 years, almost 40, still no kids. Probably never having kids. Who knows why, they don’t talk about it. But regardless, they’re still happy together and obviously get on very well.

You can find women in their 20s with tubal ligations who can’t ever have children.

You can find women in their 20s who are autistic, which in my experience often don’t want/care about kids and don’t change their minds the way non-autistic women do.

You can find women in their mid-30s who are past the baby rabies stage, still single, and are confident they don’t ever want children — and who are also as desperate to settle down into forever marriage as you are.

The women you want are out there. Are you using that childfree dating app? Going to childfree meetups? Chatting up women on the childfree Reddit board — it seems to be more women there than men?

But beyond screening better for more appropriate partners, you need to get your mind right.

A therapist is almost certainly crucial for you, just to help you work through these issues you have around love.

More than that though, it sounds like what you are really seeking is not a woman, but God.

Chase

This is probably one of the most compelling things I've ever read on here and has me sticking around for a moment. Part of it demonstrates true insight imo. And here it is, tucked away in a slush pile, with very few people to read it.

You may call it 'god', but I find that probably accurate yet too loaded and misleading. I think this search is for 'presence.' Said for fear that anyone might think they need to hear actual voices from a mountain top to complete such a search...

 

[Bill]

You need to learn to meet your own emotional needs

 

[Train]

@Dough

I've dealt with similar issues where I'm seeking love from other people. The problem is, as mentioned above, the love is conditional, fickle, inconsistent, etc. So you're setting yourself up for disappointment.

It's not a matter of manning up or killing your need for love either. It's about meeting that need for love yourself. Your need is 100% valid.

Your inner child is crying for love. The solution is not to punt it into oncoming traffic. You're just reinforcing negative experiences and making things worse.

I've been where you are. More money, more competency, more accomplishments... None of those truly fill that void. These feel good... for a while. But they're only fleeting pleasant feelings.

What's worked for me is telling myself I love myself unconditionally. Almost like a mantra. It's brought deep pain to the surface that then resolves itself. Doing nice things for myself is great too.

Basically, imagine how you'd show love to someone. Write out a list of ways to show love to others. Then do them for yourself.

The way you'd love someone is you'd tell them. You'd give/make them nice gifts. You'd give them compliments. You'd be a shoulder for them to cry on. You'd help them with something important. You'd make sure they're comfortable, eating well, feeling well, etc. Shower yourself with that love.

The best part is that you can give yourself as much love as you need. There's no conditions or anything. You want it, you give it to yourself.

 

[HoofHearted]

I have a healthy amount of skepticism for those previous two responses. To the degree that I would say I absolutely do not believe them myself.

For better or worse, I venture a guess that man is a social creature and cannot himself meet all his emotional needs in a vacuum, nor can he really "love" himself in that way he (thinks) he needs to be loved. It would seem in its nature to require an 'other.'

But maybe he can investigate and understand what he actually desires beneath that surface level, and maybe he can learn it's actually already there for him, and he can give it others freely.

Or maybe I'm fuckin full of shit and dumb af. The real point of this response is really to just highlight that this may be a topic worth mining.

 

[Train]

I have a healthy amount of skepticism for those previous two responses. To the degree that I would say I absolutely do not believe them myself.

For better or worse, I venture a guess that man is a social creature and cannot himself meet all his emotional needs in a vacuum, nor can he really "love" himself in that way he (thinks) he needs to be loved. It would seem in its nature to require an 'other.'

But maybe he can investigate and understand what he actually desires beneath that surface level, and maybe he can learn it's actually already there for him, and he can give it others freely.

Or maybe I'm fuckin full of shit and dumb af. The real point of this response is really to just highlight that this may be a topic worth mining.

Man is a social creature, no argument there. We're meant to be socially active.

My reply was geared towards him becoming more self-sufficient in the specific need of love. To the point where "external" love is nice but he doesn't need it and he's not in toxic dynamics for a modicum of it.

Also, when I say love, I mean it in the philosophical sense and not the chemical/physical "in love" feeling.

The intent is so he's not a codependent chasing people for love. Personally speaking, that's asking for pain and a self-fulfilling prophesy to never get it. The void never gets filled the way one would think it does. Also attracts the wrong people who will play the same script.

Codependent script: "I am unworthy of love. I need to do all these things to get it from others. I need to compromise my boundaries to get it."

This attracts someone who thinks the same: "He is unworthy of love. He needs to do all these things to get it. He needs to compromise his boundaries."

So ideally, he readjusts his internal script to "I am worthy of love" by showing it to himself. And then he'll find people that reinforce this script with their love BUT he doesn't need them. And he filters out the ones who will just feed on his need for love.

 

[HoofHearted]

I might make a couple of inputs for semantics here (yes, for all this invisible, unmeasurable, maybe even nonexistent stuff). The first thing it occurs to me to say is the 'script' you've presented resembles to me more "borderline" behavioral traits than any definition of "codependency" that I know. That could be a relevant concept if explored, but even without doing so, and if what you gave as an example is "codependency" in some definition, I still understand your meaning.

So I will put a response into similar terms for ease of understanding and convenience, even though I do not accept the supplied definitions of those terms on the face of them. Tldr; "I'm speaking your language"

All of which is just to say, is "love" (which hasn't been defined yet other than as being a philosophical notion) what your "codependent" is really chasing?

Another reason I don't like these terms is because I don't believe the original poster's behavior or expressed attitudes are pathological or even abnormal. I also don't think there's a need to describe this behavior in any kind of a clinical context, but that seems to be the 21st century's favorite thing to do.

... Because this behavior has been described throughout human history, obviously, in more potent ways.

You will yearn. You will desire. And what a handy external appearance women are. Maybe some of you more verbose muthafuckas will write some beefy poetry about it, and get exiled from Florence.

I think the shape of the question actually is a) what is this yearning and b) what are the best ways to deal with it? But I'm not the article writer around here, nobody has asked me that so I'll leave it to the scientists.

But I won't pretend I'm all that different from OP. It sounds just like, over time, I've acquired more tools for my belt when it comes to dealing with the internal feelings he seems to suggest he's experiencing.

 

[Train]

Alll of which is just to say, is "love" (which hasn't been defined yet other than as being a philosophical notion) what your "codependent" is really chasing?

This medically reviewed article explains it better: https://psychcentral.com/lib/codependency-no-more-how-to-recover-from-self-love-deficit-disorder#6

Of relevance are bullet points 2., 12., and 18.

Another reason I don't like these terms is because I don't believe the original poster's behavior or expressed attitudes are pathological or even abnormal. I also don't think there's a need to describe this behavior in any kind of a clinical context, but that seems to be the 21st century's favorite thing to do.

It's hard to say if the issues are pathological or abnormal. Not only are we getting probably 10% of the whole story (just by nature of online medium) but also the boards aren't the best place to troubleshoot.

The clinical terms are helpful because they're generally known, albeit I will say probably obscured by misinformation and trendy memes of it. Ex. Any and every quirk meaning someone is autistic in social media.

You will yearn. You will desire. And what a handy external appearance women are. Maybe some of you more verbose muthafuckas will write some beefy poetry about it, and get exiled from Florence.

Yeah, I'm definitely not saying to kill the yearning. Just giving advice from what's worked for me to satisfy the yearning that's self-sufficient based on experiences.

I think the shape of the question actually is a) what is this yearning and b) what are the best ways to deal with it? But I'm not the article writer around here, nobody has asked me that so I'll leave it to the scientists.

My read is he's yearning for love and validation. But again, going off of the original post. If it was in an offline setting, the read can change.

Also based on how he said social experiences like friends or romantic partners isn't satisfying the yearning.

A in-person therapist is probably better equipped most likely.

 

[HoofHearted]

Yeah, I'm definitely not saying to kill the yearning. Just giving advice from what's worked for me to satisfy the yearning that's self-sufficient based on experiences.

I suspect this is the real value being offered. I find it practical.

I haven't really addressed OP at all. I am not saying I truly know his life (I don't) or what his problem actually is (I'm guessing). However, after running the statistical analysis, and after making additional shit up, too-- I have somewhat confident "guess" that anybody who came up to me and expressed these sentiments as has been presented is probably having a normal, human experience... albeit having a difficult time with it, so far as life can sometimes be difficult.

Along those lines, it goes into the bucket of "normal shit that humans do." And that bucket has been around a long time, and presents to us things that seem to be the case, or general principles. There is no life where you will not feel pain or discomfort. Going backwards now, I don't think there is a life where OP (or hypothetical OP, maybe, since you reminded me I actually do not know him) does not feel what he's expressed above.

I think there's probably a life where he gets better at feeling it, though.

 

[Bill]

OP, if you decide to see a therapist I recommend avoiding a psychiatrist or cognitive psychologist. For your issue you will probably be better off with a experiential type of therapy like IFS, psychoanalysis, or gestalt.

 

[TestY]

OP, if you decide to see a therapist I recommend avoiding a psychiatrist or cognitive psychologist. For your issue you will probably be better off with a experiential type of therapy like IFS, psychoanalysis, or gestalt.

An experiential approach could be useful, although I'd argue that one should work with both cleaning up undigested stuff and adding in empowerment, efficacy, and solution focus.

A central question is: how do we understand the core issue, is it:
- Lack of skill in building cooperative and satisfying relations (Alfred Adler)
- Lack of self-acceptance (Albert Ellis)
- General lack of efficacy and learned helplessness (Positive psychology, Solution-focused therapy, Self-coaching)
- Undigested emotional baggage (Accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy (AEDP), Intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy (ISTDP), Coherence Therapy - IFS is also one option, although I like ISTDP's critique). Gestalt therapy is not the worst, but I was convinced by Steve Andreas' critique.
- Lack of acceptance by primary caretakers (Carl Rogers, Erich Fromm)

Psychology and ideology
The different problem conceptualizations are not arbitrary, they mirror the ideology the specific approach belongs to.
So in an individualistic humanistic framework, the problem tends to be thwarting of key psychological needs: autonomy, relatedness, and efficacy.

In an individualistic romantic framework, the problem tends to be that one's emotions are repressed and undigested. In a social humanist framework, the problem tends to be viewed as having been deprived of recognition/acceptance, so the solution becomes to give the person "unconditional positive regard". Albert Ellis solves this by giving oneself unconditional self-acceptance. Which is a pretty good solution imo.

Framework
In my opinion, a key thing to research is what base assumptions underly these different paradigms, and make sure one doesn't unknowingly choose a solution from a disempowering paradigm - of which there are many. For example, social humanism downplays the role of individual agency - similar to how a socialist approach to politics can be. And the romantic approach tends to be more introverted and introspective. Goethe criticized the [neoplatonic] romantics for just this.

Maslow's humanistic psychology, on the other hand, has a lot of good assumptions. Cooperation, agency, achievement. And we can see these principles applied in Alfred Adler's individual psychology, Solution-focused therapy, and Positive psychology. And we can also see it in some self-development, like Tony Robbins, Self-coaching, etc. We can also mix and add in some inner work for digesting issues, like AEDP or Eckhart Tolle.