PsycHacks

In this episode, I talk about a realization that I had many years ago with respect to my competitiveness and drive. If misapplied -- that is, if applied toward the general enrichment of someone else -- these otherwise positive qualities can become a trap. To the extent that you are not yet your own master, you are still someone else's slave -- and excelling in that role is not necessarily in your best interests. #competition #ambition #slave

A company that blames and shames its customer base for not parting with its hard-earned money is arrogant and misguided. It's a bad business that blames its customers. If a company is not yet enjoying the success it would prefer to enjoy in the marketplace, it has a problem with its marketing, a problem with its product, or both. This is a lesson easily generalizable to dating and relationships. If you are not yet enjoying the success you would prefer to enjoy in the sexual marketplace, you have a problem with your marketing, a problem with your product, or both. #business #dating #accountability

Exploring the delicate balance of honesty in relationships, this discussion highlights the heavy price of punishing truth-tellers. It reveals how fear of hostility can lead to a web of lies, leaving trust hanging by a thread. The conversation emphasizes that expecting unwavering honesty amidst potential fallout is unrealistic. Ultimately, it raises awareness about how valuing truth over comfort can strengthen connections, while ignoring honesty can introduce significant dysfunction.

The three goals of human interaction is a concept developed by Marsha Linehan for her dialectal behavior therapy module on interpersonal effectiveness. According to Linehan, there are really only three goals humans can have when interacting with others: effectiveness, harmony, and self-respect. Ideally, all three goals are (more or less) met in the course of our interactions; however, sometimes this isn't practically possible. Linehan advocates the conscious and strategic prioritization of one goal over the others in these cases. I'll discuss more in this episode. #dbt #relationships #communication

This is an old psychotherapy saw: "you've got to feel it to heal it." So what does it really mean? I'm not quite sure how it works, but unprocessed emotions don't really go away. They exist in a kind of frozen state somewhere beneath the threshold of awareness. To relieve oneself of their burden, it's necessary to experience their affective component with awareness. In fact, you can think of feeling as the subjective experience of an emotion leaving the body. I'll discuss more in this episode. #feeling #emotions #trauma

Explore the two types of dates: the good ones and those that serve as valuable practice. Embrace every date as a chance to hone your skills in conversation, flirtation, and seduction. Adopting a positive mindset helps prevent burnout and enhances your dating experience. Regular practice keeps you in top form, ensuring you’re ready when real opportunities arise. Treating all dating experiences as stepping stones to growth will transform your approach to relationships.

This is an episode specifically for the 20-somethings in the audience. Have you ever been the last person to leave a house party? Chance are is wasn't a great experience, as nothing good happens after a certain point in the evening. Well, the same is true to your 20s, in general. Over time, for better or for worse, your friends will come to prioritize other aspects of their lives above their social lives. By their early 30s, they will all have better things to do than getting wasted on the weekend -- and so should you. #friends #party #20s

A case can be made for the unconditionality of love from a spiritual perspective. However, even assuming that love is unconditional, the fact of the matter is that relationships are not. Relationships are -- and should be -- conditional. This is because people are people -- and placing people in situations where they are not accountable for their actions encourages corruption and cruelty. In this episode, I'll discuss the concept of "justifiability" with respect to love, promulgated by the creator of dialectical behavior therapy, Marsha Linehan. #love #relationships #unconditionallove

The ugly truth about commitment is that if you are committed up until the point that you aren't, you were never committed to begin with. And it's this "uncommitted commitment" that is one of the factors primarily responsible for the sorry state of dating today. Even our highest form of commitment -- the institution of marriage -- has become an at-will relationship that can be unilaterally terminated by one party at any time, at no fault of the other, and often to the benefit of the party breaching the agreement. And this is the outcome that occurs more than half of the time. Such a commitment is a liability, as it gives people the illusion of security that is not supported by the reality of the agreement. #commitment #marriage #relationships

The asymmetricality of pain and pleasure is one of the most infuriating aspects of being alive. Not only are there many more different flavors of pain than there are of pleasure, pain is generally experienced as being more painful than pleasure is pleasurable. This means, in order to have a non-miserable life, you need significantly more pleasure than pain. The same is true in your relationships. In this episode, I'll discuss John Gottman's "magic ratio" of positive-to-negative experiences required to make relationships flourish. #pleasure #relationships #love