This may run long, so bear with me.

Law Enforcement employees tend to come from two specific groups of people. The first group is going to consist of people who actually joined up to try to protect people and make things safer for them. They are idealists who may grow jaded over time; because realistically if your only input on what being a LEO is the internet and reality TV, you are not prepared for the type of mental assault you will endure day in and day out. I'm not talking about angry people, but stuff like drawing circles around little chunks of brains on the highway from a teenage girl that went through a windshield.

As an officer at any level (except maybe a small town), you are going to see the absolute worst side of humanity on a daily basis and you aren't on a tour of duty like the military. You don't get to 'rotate' home and put it behind you. This will wear on anybody who is not a sociopath, it will grind you down to a nub. You could see professional help for this, but I will go into that later.

The second type of person who goes into law enforcement is someone who likes authority, a sense of power over someone else, a bully. This person is in the job because it gives them power over others and the law will protect them because it is vaguely worded in SO many cases. This person will shrug off the effects that cripple the first type over time, because they feel in charge of every situation. After a while, if they don't tone it down, they will get caught. Thankfully the cell camera and the internet tends to be helping clean them out due to their own incapability to see they can't ALWAYS be in charge, but it will be a long road because this group is the BULK of the ones that join LE organizations.

Now why do these two groups tend to be the ones that you are going to run into on a consistent basis? The simple, hard answer is that we pay our front line LEO's very little compared to other services that risk their life or experience the mental grind. Your average patrol officer is going to pull a median salary of about 35k with comparable benefits to someone working in a office job. A firefighter is going to pull around 45k and scales up much quicker, not to mention their benefits are beyond good. EMT's make about the same as patrol officers, but their benefits are also very good and they don't have the same stressors. I know that ranges will vary and State LEO's are very well paid on average, but we are talking about the people you are going to encounter most often.

If you have to choose between a job where you are going to be considered a 'hero' or a job where everyone is going to be biased towards you being a 'villain, and the hero jobs pay better, which would you logically choose? Assuming of course that you are not sorted into one of the two groups I described, most are going to run away from serving in LE. In fact, this is why more of the 'bullies' tend towards LE and the 'idealists' don't. So you already have created a situation where the 'stormtrooper' mindset is going to prefer this job and haven't considered options to rectify it. The people you don't run into that much are going to be the people that took college and got pushed through the ranks quickly. If you didn't take college or just took an Associates Degree, you have to beat these people out. It is extremely hard to do that, even if you do your job much better than they did.

The final factor that runs into this is the mental issues I mentioned earlier. If you seek help from your employers for mental stress, they are going to handle it differently if you are a LEO. You are going to find out quickly that you are expendable. If you seek help and get classified as PTSD, you set a chain of events in motion that is inexorable. You will be rotated to a desk. You will see a Psychiatrist who will prescribe anti-depressant or anti-anxiety medication. This person will meet with you for around 15 minutes 3-4 times a week, ask you questions, and ask if the medication is helping. If you return to functional status in a month or two, you get put back on duty. If you don't, they put you on short term disability for up to one year. Your visits drop to once a week, then once a month. One year later, your employment is terminated. They hire a new recruit and start the cycle again about the same time that you start your short term disability. You get to try to salvage your career in anyway possible, hopefully you paid through the nose for long term disability, or you can try to find a smaller department that doesn't bother to dig too deep on background checks.

Other related fields like firefighters/emts comprehend PTSD and work with their people much harder. They have better benefits so you they can see outside therapists as much as needed. There is less stigma if you have a problem, because they understand. You go on the fritz as an LEO and you will overhear people who used to respect you call you weak or a pussy. Sadly this type of thing happens at all levels of LE, even as a State Trooper you are expendable.

In any case, the point to this essay is that the system is flawed and is going to drive out the good LEOs and save the bad ones to protect itself from litigation. Protect yourself at all times with video, be advised of the laws and loopholes in them that bad LEos will exploit, and don't force confrontation with a LEO if there is a loophole. If the man had stepped outside and talked calmly, the incident would not have escalated as it did. In this case he did not inform himself of the loopholes correctly and got tasered (which was improper, they didn't warn him correctly or anything), and the LEOs look like villains again.

Find one who uses stretches and massage, one that starts with an MRI or Xray, and above all, one that doesn't crack anything.

Or you could just go to a massage therapist and take the gamble out of it.

Dr. Evil: There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum. It's breathtaking. I suggest you try it.
Therapist: You know, we have to stop.

malinois are an amazing breed. we had one working as a therapy dog when I was a therapist in a juvenile detention center. super smart and affectionate.

@Reefie -- come to where I live. There are all sorts of men who are attracted to women who aren't into stereotypical men's things and felt alienated growing up.

They tend to be my favorite people -- gentle, intelligent, funny. Their struggles made them more human and vulnerable, and not carapaced away from themselves and others.

Two of them I count as good friends. Both in happy partnerships with women who accept them as non-stereotypical males. One guy has even jokingly labeled himself an "honorary woman."

You need to find a more supportive community, honey bunny. Get thee to a therapist, as hpqp says, and then get thee to a community that embraces you as much as you embrace yourself.

The saddest thing about this vid for me was seeing how pumped up this poor person made herself in order to fit in to society. I am so glad she stopped that struggle and embraced herself.

>> ^hpqp:

>> ^Reefie:
I've often found myself alienated from other men... I think differently, I behave differently, I'm not into typical 'guy' things. Generally I find I understand women relatively well but am totally clueless when it comes to how guys' minds work. At one point in my life I was giving serious thought to the prospect of gender change but there was one obstacle I hadn't counted on - private medical insurance companies and the NHS won't contemplate gender change unless the individual is attracted to those of the same sex. The idea of creating a lesbian didn't go down well with those who have the authority to make such decisions on my behalf.

Wow, that's an extremely bizarre and arbitrary line to draw on the part of the NHS. Maybe they suppose that people like you will have an easier life as a "feminine" heterosexual man (or "male lesbian") than as a transsexual lesbian (and vice-versa for women)?
One thing I've heard from an acquaintance who works with trans people though is that sometimes men and women who are uncomfortable with their gender (often because of childhood trauma) become convinced they are the wrong sex as a means of avoiding tackling those issues. That's one reason why having to go through psychotherapy (the woman I cite is a therapist specialised in this issue) before being allowed to begin hrt/grs is not a bad idea. But refusing gender reassignment just because it'd render you "homosexual", that's pretty absurd.


Despite the absurdity of the denial, in a way I'm glad that option was denied me. It allowed me to come to terms with who I am regardless of my gender. Nowadays I accept that I'm a guy, just not a stereotypical guy. Now the only dilemma I face regularly is the rejection by women who I find attractive (talking both personality and physically, I'm rarely lured by physical attraction alone) since I don't conform to their expectations of the male of the species. Can't blame people for wanting to avoid a fucked-up individual

There's another reason I'm glad the option wasn't available to me... I have two friends who have both gone through the transformation (both are/were guys) and seeing first-hand the emotional anguish they dealt with made me realise I might not have been strong enough to handle the pressures that are imposed on any individual who goes through that process.

... Uncle Frank..? NOOOOOOOO!
>> ^hpqp:

>> ^Reefie:
I've often found myself alienated from other men... I think differently, I behave differently, I'm not into typical 'guy' things. Generally I find I understand women relatively well but am totally clueless when it comes to how guys' minds work. At one point in my life I was giving serious thought to the prospect of gender change but there was one obstacle I hadn't counted on - private medical insurance companies and the NHS won't contemplate gender change unless the individual is attracted to those of the same sex. The idea of creating a lesbian didn't go down well with those who have the authority to make such decisions on my behalf.

Wow, that's an extremely bizarre and arbitrary line to draw on the part of the NHS. Maybe they suppose that people like you will have an easier life as a "feminine" heterosexual man (or "male lesbian") than as a transsexual lesbian (and vice-versa for women)?
One thing I've heard from an acquaintance who works with trans people though is that sometimes men and women who are uncomfortable with their gender (often because of childhood trauma) become convinced they are the wrong sex as a means of avoiding tackling those issues. That's one reason why having to go through psychotherapy (the woman I cite is a therapist specialised in this issue) before being allowed to begin hrt/grs is not a bad idea. But refusing gender reassignment just because it'd render you "homosexual", that's pretty absurd.

>> ^Reefie:

I've often found myself alienated from other men... I think differently, I behave differently, I'm not into typical 'guy' things. Generally I find I understand women relatively well but am totally clueless when it comes to how guys' minds work. At one point in my life I was giving serious thought to the prospect of gender change but there was one obstacle I hadn't counted on - private medical insurance companies and the NHS won't contemplate gender change unless the individual is attracted to those of the same sex. The idea of creating a lesbian didn't go down well with those who have the authority to make such decisions on my behalf.


Wow, that's an extremely bizarre and arbitrary line to draw on the part of the NHS. Maybe they suppose that people like you will have an easier life as a "feminine" heterosexual man (or "male lesbian") than as a transsexual lesbian (and vice-versa for women)?

One thing I've heard from an acquaintance who works with trans people though is that sometimes men and women who are uncomfortable with their gender (often because of childhood trauma) become convinced they are the wrong sex as a means of avoiding tackling those issues. That's one reason why having to go through psychotherapy (the woman I cite is a therapist specialised in this issue) before being allowed to begin hrt/grs is not a bad idea. But refusing gender reassignment just because it'd render you "homosexual", that's pretty absurd.

As a marriage and family therapist, though his hypothesis is interesting, I couldn't disagree more.

We don't emote with the knowledge of our biology. The knowledge of what we have evolved from does not enter in to our minds when we are lusting over someone. Our biological understanding of our species doesn't sit in the forefront of our minds when we are choosing to commit to a person.

We react to infidelity as an emotional thing as a hit to our feelings of stability. Stability is a crucial part of our evolution. It helps stabilize the home front, ensuring that our offspring will have a better chance at survival and will learn the things we want them to learn. Sexual bonds with others is a symbolic way that we emotionally process as a threat to that very need of stability.

He is greatly underestimating the emotional bond that is created (I believe biologically) when we have sex with each other. Saying that "sex isn't a big deal" is his flawed assumption.

If you feel trapped in a relationship, I suggest that perhaps marriage isn't the thing for you.

Oh man, no, no no no no. Picard is okay and all, but Kirk is where it's at. Picard, with all his 90's extreme political correctness, and bringing his therapist along with him wherever he goes, isn't half the man Kirk is. Kirk would have just made eyes at that blobby crystal thing, invited it over for cocktails and then put the whole matter to rest later on in his quarters. And if that didn't work, he would have karate chopped it into submission.

My office is in a neighborhood where such women fear to tread.In reply to this comment by UsesProzac:
What about young, overweight, misanthropic white women?

In reply to this comment by Trancecoach:
Clinical therapist... I talk to young, attractive, affluent white women between the ages of 25 and 35 about finding meaning and purpose in their lives...

I also consult with artists and filmmakers about how to make their projects appealing to investors and financiers.

Clinical therapist... I talk to young, attractive, affluent white women between the ages of 25 and 35 about finding meaning and purpose in their lives...

I also consult with artists and filmmakers about how to make their projects appealing to investors and financiers.

>> ^00Scud00:

I think both sides are pretty much full of crap in this video, but I will agree that the invention of holodecks would be the end of society as we know it, I can barely drag myself away from video games as it is.


I thought it was insightful the way TNG anticipated and addressed holo addiction in multiple episodes before things like MMO addiction existed. It seems on a Federation ship you are given strict holodeck rations and excessive use is quickly flagged and a super hot therapist dispatched to cure you. Beyond that I'd imagine that the average earth citizen is neither needed or expected to do much work. But the Federation attracts particularly ambitious people who care about real life.

I'd like to write that kid a referral too... to a good anger management therapist.