PSYCHOLOGY MEGATHREAD:
40 of my favorite psychological concepts, introduced as thoroughly as I could manage in 280 characters or less.
These are core human behaviors that play out in all relationships, & are explored through therapy.
Enjoy, ask questions, & add your own!
Things that should be taught in school:
💔what to do with tough emotions
💀how to think about death & grief
💦quality sex & consent ed
💸how to do your taxes
🚑cpr & first aid
🧠unconscious bias basics
🍳basic cooking & hygiene skills
🌎how to reduce carbon footprint
What else?
Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go. - Jamie Anderson
Psst... any relationship that can be ruined by a thoughtful conversation about how you feel and what you need doesn’t have long-term stability or potential anyway
Imposter Syndrome is believing that you are not intelligent or capable despite evidence of high achievement. There is a feeling of phoniness and a fear of being found out or exposed as a fraud.
Sound familiar?
Here are 12 tips for working through your Imposter Syndrome:
Psst... any relationship that can be ruined by a thoughtful conversation about how you feel and what you need doesn’t have long-term stability or potential anyway
When patients share a story they’ve told me before, I don’t stop them and say that I’ve already heard that one.
Instead I assume that I didn’t hear what they needed me to the last time, and try to listen more deeply and with new ears.
Try this with parents / friends / kids ✨
Pop-psych 💩 I hate: no one will love you until you learn to love yourself.
Nope. We learn to love ourselves through the love we receive from others, ideally starting with our caregivers. Surround yourself with people who love you while you learn to love yourself 💓
It’s expected that this education will come from parents, but many parents were never taught any of this. I’ve heard about many parents learning these things from their children.
What might change in society if all humans had access to this knowledge...?
(h/t
@chrismessina
)
Things that should be taught in school:
🚑 first aid skills
💦 sex and consent ed
🍳 basic cooking & hygiene
🧠 unconscious bias basics
💸 money management & taxes
🌎 how to reduce carbon footprint
💔 what to do with tough emotions
💀 how to think about death & grief
What else?
Psst... any relationship that can be ruined by a thoughtful conversation about how you feel and what you need doesn’t have long-term stability or potential anyway
Our culture has such an obsession with “learning to be happy” that when we experience any kind of sadness, anger, or overwhelm, we assume something is wrong with us.
Life includes suffering. It always will. Let’s not pathologize normal pain.
Being a leader is tough. Being an emotionally intelligent and effective leader is tougher.
Here are 7 things all leaders should get comfortable saying to their teams 🧵👇
Imagine if we checked in with a therapist every six months starting at age 3 like we do with a dentist
...emotional fitness habits solidified when we’re young...emotional cavities caught early and tended to...
What a world that’d be 💪❤️
Psst... any relationship that can be ruined by a thoughtful conversation about how you feel and what you need doesn’t have long-term stability or potential anyway
A professor once told me that when patients are stuck in sadness, it’s our job to help them get to anger; when they’re stuck in anger, it’s our job to help them get to sadness.
I think about this a lot. That these emotions play bodyguard for each other, but both need to be felt.
“White privilege is saying:
It’s bad that Black people are getting killed, but destroying property needs to stop.
instead of:
It’s bad that property is getting damaged, but killing Black people needs to stop.
You’re focusing on the wrong priority.”
One of my difficult but important realizations in adulthood was that there are rarely “right” or “wrong” choices, just different paths to take. With every choice we make, we have to mourn the loss of all we didn't choose. In this way, growth & grief are inextricably intertwined.
When patients share a story they’ve told me before, I don’t stop them and say that I’ve already heard that one.
Instead I assume that I didn’t hear what they needed me to the last time, and try to listen more deeply and with new ears.
Try this with parents / friends / kids ✨
Some people sacrifice the balance within them to keep the balance around them. This often comes from growing up in environments where that felt like the only real choice.
Here to remind you that you have more choices now. And that your internal world is worthy of your attention.
When kids don’t feel listened to, some scream louder. Others stop talking.
Which one were you?
Because this is how your pain responds to you now when it doesn’t feel heard. And if you don’t listen, it’ll either get louder, or destroy you quietly.
Not sure who needs to hear this today but, sometimes despite all our best intentions and efforts, shit just happens. Take a breath, forgive yourself, keep movin.
It blows my mind that there are people who don’t think our childhoods affect who we are now.
There are few things that I know to be true with more conviction than this.
When patients share a story they’ve told me before, I don’t stop them and say that I’ve already heard that one.
Instead I assume that I didn’t hear what they needed me to the last time, and try to listen more deeply and with new ears.
Try this with parents / friends / kids ✨
No one’s thinking about that weird thing you said. They’re busy worrying about that weird thing they said that you didn’t notice because you were in your head about that weird thing you said.
Imposter Syndrome is feeling like a phony or fraud despite evidence of high achievement.
Sound familiar?
Here are 12 tips for working through your self-doubt 🧵👇
The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth. - African Proverb
There are very few things as painful and destructive to our psyche as being rejected from a community we depend on. Be thoughtful about how you treat people at the periphery.
When patients share a story they’ve told me before, I don’t stop them and say that I’ve already heard that one.
Instead I assume that I didn’t hear what they needed me to the last time, and try to listen more deeply and with new ears.
Try this with parents / friends / kids ✨
Underneath anxiety is a powerful belief that worrying keeps bad things from happening (if I stop worrying will my fears come true?)
The uncomfortable truth is that we’re not that powerful, we don’t have that much control. Scary to accept, but will also set you free.
Lots of conversations happening about cancel culture right now. This is an immense, complicated, emotional, and nuanced topic, but I'd like to share my perspective about one small aspect.
Bear with me while I start with a psychological concept... [THREAD]
🧠 Intellectualization: using reason & intellect to avoid feeling our emotions. Intellectualizers are more comfortable with logic & rationality than emotionality and are good at speaking through things without actually feeling them. This can be a strength but also a problem
Get comfortable with silence. When a person is thinking or feeling, let them think or feel. You’ll be amazed what people share when given an extra bit of space.
People want a simple solution for their mental health. Most mental health companies pretend to have one.
But the simplest solution, truly, is to work on yourself, every single day, for the rest of your life. It's not easy, but it does work.
Pop-psych 💩 I hate (part III): no one will love you until you learn to love yourself.
Nope. We learn to love ourselves through the love we receive from others, ideally starting with our caregivers. Surround yourself with people who love you while you learn to love yourself 💓
No one’s thinking about that weird thing you said. They’re too busy worrying about that weird thing they said that you didn’t notice because you were in your head about that weird thing you said.
No one’s thinking about that weird thing you said. They’re too busy worrying about that weird thing they said that you didn’t notice because you were in your head about that weird thing you said.
Imagine if we checked in with a therapist every six months starting at age 3 like we do with a dentist
...emotional fitness habits solidified when we’re young...emotional cavities caught early and tended to...
What a world that’d be 💪❤️
Everything does not always have to be “for the best.”
It’s ok if a painful experience didn’t make you stronger.
It’s ok if you’re angry about a trauma, and not grateful for how it shaped you.
Sometimes things are just shitty. And that’s ok. Surviving is enough.
My friends who are in therapy tend to be better listeners than those not in therapy.
Maybe because they have their own space to be heard...
Maybe because they know the power of being listened to...
Maybe because therapy is a magic make-you-better-at-relationships machine 🥰
Men in therapy: let’s take down the stigma and spread the good word.
What’s one important thing you’ve learned about yourself / one way therapy has positively impacted your life?
Do you hate small talk as much as I do?
Instead of small talk, try talking big. Ask thoughtful questions that invite connection. Lean into vulnerability and share yourself with others.
Here are 7 questions you can ask instead of “what’s new with you?” 🧵⤵️
Someone asked me why I think we use food to manage our emotions.
Because, I said, for our first years of life, food and love are one and the same. You are hungry, your greatest source of love shows up, you stop being hungry.
I don’t know that we ever fully decouple the two.
The next generation is so much more incentivized to become influencers who speak confidently about things they have no expertise in, than they are to become scientists or doctors or anyone who knows what the f*ck they’re talking about. Cool cool cool this should work out great.
Our culture has such an obsession with “learning to be happy” that when we experience any kind of sadness, anger, or overwhelm, we assume something is really wrong with us.
Life includes suffering. It always will. Let’s not pathologize normal pain.
Underneath anxiety is a powerful belief that worrying actually keeps bad things from happening (if I stop worrying will my fears come true?)
The uncomfortable truth is that we are not that powerful, we don’t have that much control. Scary to accept, but will also set you free.
Starting therapy is a daunting process and it’s tough to know how it’s supposed to feel.
Here are some things I wish I had known when I started therapy.
[ongoing THREAD]
Some of you have never had a therapist blow your mind by reflecting something to you that you already knew on some level but never heard in just the right away at just the right time to change your relationship to it forever and it shows.
A thread of people to hang on to:
The friend who tells you the truth even when it’s tough. People who do what they say they’re going to do. Make-you-laugh-so-hard-you-might-pee friends. Those you feel safe to be your strangest self with. Yes-and people. Gentle souls…
Shoutout to all the people whose minds move at 1.5x. The ones who are clever and quick, strategic and sharp, anxious, fidgety, and wound up. It’s a blessing and a curse, isn’t it?
Apologize for...
💔 breaking your word
🚧 crossing a boundary
🤕 hurting someone with your actions
Don’t apologize for...
🧘🏾 existing
🐃 being different
😢 having emotions
👋🏾 voicing an opinion
🤸🏽 being your unique, important, eccentric self
The fact that the word ‘needy’ is such an insult speaks to how terrified we are of our own needs and dependence.
We are all needy when our needs are not met, just as we are all hungry when we go without food.
Mental healthcare is going in 2 directions:
1) quantitative: quick-fix & tech-focused
2) qualitative: investment-based & relationship-focused
1 is compelling. It colludes with our wish for things to be simple. But we are not simple. For real support & real change, go with 2 🙌
Things that terrify me, therapy edition:
🤖 AI bot therapy
😶 the life coaching industry
🛋 therapists who’ve never done any of their own therapy
💊 psych meds prescribed without accompanying therapy
🪄 the overwhelming pull for quick fixes to complicated problems
You?
Everything does not always have to be “for the best.”
It’s ok if a painful experience didn’t make you stronger.
It’s ok if you’re angry about a trauma, and not grateful for how it shaped you.
Sometimes things are just shitty. And that’s ok. Surviving is enough.
How to accept a compliment:
🙅🏽 Don’t refute it
🏸 Don’t throw a compliment right back
🥰 Pause & let it land on you - feel it!
🗣 Ask for more info to understand the compliment better (the way you might if it were negative feedback)
✏️ Write it down & put it with the others