PsycHacks Episode 560: Dread (understanding evil)
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Oct 10, 2025 Explore the concept of dread as an emotional response to mortality and how its repression leads to persistent unease. Discover harmful avoidance strategies like drugs and excessive work that people use to escape this feeling. Learn about 'foreclosure,' where impulsive choices arise from the need to eliminate uncertainty. Delve into the darker aspects of human instinct tied to destruction and death. Finally, find practical approaches like shadow work and embracing absurdity to courageously coexist with our inevitable fate.
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Mortality Is Intellectually Known But Emotionally Repressed
- Awareness of mortality is emotionally unbearable even if we intellectually accept it.
- That emotional contact is largely repressed to allow daily functioning.
Dread As The Leak Of Repressed Mortality
- Dread is the leaked emotional residue of repressed awareness of death.
- It operates as a perpetual unease that undermines full immersion in life.
Spot Avoidance Strategies Masking Dread
- Recognize common avoidance strategies like sex, drugs, work, and distraction as attempts to escape dread.
- Notice these behaviors and question whether they mask deeper existential unease.
