As an adult, validation is more like a drug we use to distract ourselves away from our own underlying state. It’s why emotionally unavailable people can be so attractive.
The glass ceiling of happiness is held in place by two stout pillars, one psychological, the other biological. On the psychological level, happiness depends on expectations rather than objective conditions. We don’t become satisfied by leading a peaceful and prosperous existence. Rather, we become satisfied when realities matches our expectations. The bad news is that as conditions improve, expectations balloon. Dramatic improvements in conditions, as humankind has experienced in recent decades, translate into greater expectations rather than greater contentment. If we don’t do anything about this, our future achievements too might leave us as dissatisfied as ever.
On the biological level, both our expectations and our happiness are determined by our biochemistry, rather than by our economic, social, or political situation. According to Epicurus, we are happy when we feel pleasant sensations and are free from unpleasant ones. Jeremy Bentham similarly maintained that nature gave dominion over man to two masters — pleasure and pain — and they alone determine everything we do, say and think. Bentham’s successor, John Stuart Mill, explained that happiness is nothing but pleasure and freedom from pain, and that beyond pleasure and pain there is no good and evil. Anyone who tries to deduce good and evil from something else (such as the word of God, or the national anthem) is fooling you, and perhaps fooling himself too.
In the day of Epicurus such talk was blasphemous. In the days of Bentham and Mill it was radical subversion. But in the early 21st century this is scientific orthodoxy. According to the life sciences, happiness and suffering are nothing but different balances of bodily sensations. We never react to events in the outside word, but only to sensations in our own bodies. Nobody suffers because she lost her job, because she got divorced or because the government went to war. The only thing that makes people miserable is unpleasant sensations in their own bodies. Losing one’s job can certainly trigger depression, but depression itself is a kind of unpleasant bodily sensation. A thousand things may make us angry, but anger is never an abstraction. It is always felt as a sensation of heat and tension in the body, which is what makes anger so infuriating. Not for nothing do we say that we ‘burn’ with anger.
This is about power and feeling important. It’s rooted in low self-esteem but presents as hyper-confidence and “standing up for what’s right.” Sit down and ask her what is going on in her life where her self-esteem is so low that she has to yell at store clerks to feel good about herself.
Yelling at sales people is when you see a lot of people who feels nobody cares about their voice finally have a recognized voice.
A lot of the more violent/aggressive things people do are out of fear of something happening to themselves. Think about it: Why would anyone who is secure in their life need to attack another human being? Sure, the obvious argument is that there is some kind of moral imperative, like to help others in the future or set some high ethical standard, but this is usually coming from people who are and actions that are inherently unethical in it of themselves. When people fear something, this fear manifests. It’s kinda like fight or flight.
I only accepted that treatment from her because I didn’t value myself.
Rothwell wrote that although Eden was capable of acting with ruthlessness, his main concern was to avoid being seen as “an appeaser.” Like many people, Eden convinced himself that his past actions were more consistent than they had in fact been.
Crisis is often linked to the concept of psychological stress and used to suggest a frightening or fraught experience. In general, crisis is the situation of a “complex system” (family, economy, society. Note that simple systems do not enter crises. We can speak about a crisis of moral values, and economical or political crisis, but not a motor crisis).
What most annoyed Kissinger was the manner in which Obama talked about some other world leaders. “A puzzling aspect about Obama is how someone so intelligent could treat his peers with the disdain he did in your article,” he said. “Someone of that stature usually develops a sense of humility.”
In my opinion, Obama seems to think of himself not as a part of a political process, but as sui generis, a unique phenomenon with a unique capacity. And his responsibility, as he defines it, is to keep the insensitive elements of America from unsettling the world. He is more concerned with short-term consequences turning into permanent obstacles. Another view of statesmanship might focus to a greater extent on shaping history rather than avoiding getting in its way.
Student from Western cultures tend to procrastinate in order to avoid doing worse than they have done before or from failing to learn as much as they should have, whereas student from non-Western cultures tend to procrastinate in order to avoid looking incompetent, or to avoid demonstrating a lack of ability in front of their peers.
A defense mechanism is an unconscious psychological mechanism that reduces anxiety arising from unacceptable or potentially harmful stimuli.
Stress is a feeling of emotional strain and pressure. Stress is a type of psychological pain. Small amounts of stress may be desired, beneficial, and even healthy. Positive stress may be desired, beneficial, and even healthy. Positive stress helps improve athletic performance. It also plays a factor in motivation, adaptation, and reaction to the environment.
Maslow classified esteem needs into two categories: (i) esteem for oneself (dignity, achievement, mastery, independence) and (ii) the desire for reputation or respect from others (e.g., status, prestige).
Maslow indicated that the need for respect or reputation is most important for children and adolescents and precedes real self-esteem or dignity.
You wrote, “Who you are comes out at the poker table.” Who were you when you first sat down at the poker table?
I was a girl! I say that disparagingly to myself. I was really upset with myself, to be perfectly honest. I didn’t realize I had internalized so many gender stereotypes and so much socialization from my environment. I study gender stereotypes. I have a Ph.D in psychology. I thought of myself as a good model for women, someone who stands up for myself. How can this be me? I’d be passive. I’d let people bully me. I’d fold. I would know I was making a mistake but couldn’t get the nerve or desire to do anything about it because I didn’t want tension. I didn’t want people to think, “Oh, she’s that bitch who’s been raising me all the time.” I wanted people to like me. Even when I had really good cards, I didn’t make nearly as much money as I should’ve with them because I’d end up folding or not raising. I didn’t want to upset people. I realized this is a big problem and something I have to work on. And not just in poker. I told myself, “You better get your shit together in real-life situations. You’re probably a doormat a lot of the time and don’t realize it.”
The brain doesn’t like uncertainty. We want to know. We want answers. We want a clean story.
The moment we’re on tilt, the moment emotion seeps into our decision process, we’re no longer thinking rationally. We’re no longer making probabilistic calculations, reading people, paying attention. You’re angry at someone, they got under your skin, so you make a decision because you’re angry. You say, “I should raise him because he’s an asshole.” But that’s not your good self, that’s not your clear-thinking self. That’s the version of you that didn’t know better.
I think ever since CN and EU teams became good, KR teams became more cocky and are not afraid to call themselves the best. You look at S7 and before, KR teams always compliment foreign teams and say they could win Worlds but in the end KR teams just stomp. I think it’s human nature to call someone else good if you are 100% sure you are better, but if it’s more close you call yourself the best.
Sarkozy said that being abandoned by his father shaped much of who he is today. He also has said that, in his early years, he felt inferior in relation to his wealthier and taller classmates. “What made me who I am now is the sum of all the humiliations suffered during childhood,” he said later.
A man who has been the indisputable favorite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror.
The lonely one offers his hand too quickly to whomever he encounters.
Because one tends to reject or remain ignorant of the least desirable aspects of one’s personality, the shadow is largely negative. There are, however, positive aspects that may also remain hidden in one’s shadow (especially in people with low self-esteem, anxieties, and false beliefs). Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.
If and when an individual makes an attempt to see his shadow, he becomes aware of (and often ashamed of) those qualities and impulses he denies in himself but can plainly see in others — such things as egotism, mental laziness, and sloppiness; unreal fantasies, schemes, and plots; carelessness and cowardice; inordinate love of money and possessions.
In spite of its function as a reservoir for human darkness — or perhaps because of this — the shadow is the seat of creativity; so that for some, it may be that the dark side of his being, his sinister shadow represents the true spirit of life as against the arid scholar.
Jung depicted evil as the dark side of God. People tend to believe evil is something external to them, because they project their shadow onto others. Jung interpreted the story of Jesus as an account of God facing his own shadow.
It has long been recognized that there is a relation between aggression, fear, and curiosity. A cognitive approach to this relationship puts aggression in the broader context of inconsistency reduction, and proposes that aggressive behavior is caused by an inconsistency between a desired, or expected, situation and the actually perceived situation, and functions to forcefully manipulate the perception into matching the expected situation.
Male aggression tended to produce pain or physical injury whereas female aggression tended towards psychological and social harm.
In psychological terms, hostility is considered as the attempt to extort validating evidence from the environment to confirm types of social prediction, constructs, that have failed. Instead of reconstructing their constructs to meet disconfirmation with better predictions, the hostile person attempts to force or coerce the world to fit their view, even if this is a forlorn hope, and even if it entails emotional expenditure and / or harm to self or others.
It is understandable that the perspectives of men and women on safety are so different — men and women live in different worlds. Most men fear getting laughed at or humiliated by a romantic prospect while women fear rape and death.
The fear is partly instinct, partly imagined, partly taught. If she says yes, his fear is instantly turned into euphoria. If she says no, what’s he do with that? It confirms his worst fears. He’s lost his identity, his role or place among his friends potentially. What kind of man is he? What will he do with that tsunami of emotions?
The brain is designed to seek quick, guaranteed dopamine hits, and that behaviors that feel productive are a prime way for it to accomplish that desire. The biggest example out there is the amount of time spent reading and responding to e-mail, Slack messages, and other asynchronous communication methodologies. The act of checking e-mail actually produces a tiny dopamine hit, a way of the brain rewarding yourself for doing something that may produce social value.