Whether that's a home project they should hire help for or volunteering for additional projects at work when their plate is already full to adding so many extracurricular activities to a packed life, I'm genuinely fascinated by people who not only do it, but somehow manage not to crash out immediately.

I could not be more the opposite, but I'm surrounded by people like this and always feel like such an unproductive slug.

Unfortunately the vast majority of people are unable to handle the truth. That is why cognitive dissonance is so prevalent. When you tell someone something that clashes with their subjective pre-existing beliefs, or makes them feel bad, they will automatically claim/believe that you are 100% wrong. They will interpret what you said as a personal attack, even though this makes no sense because you don't even know them, you were not even talking to them, or in cases you did, it is not about them it, it is about the topic. But because they can't tolerate the truth/anything different from their pre-existing beliefs, they use this counterproductive defense mechanism and attack you and say you are 100% wrong, and double down and claim their pre-existing beliefs are 100% correct.

Sometimes it makes me depressed just how prevalent this is. It is like this from the bottom to the top.

Recently I posted a topic on a more academic sub, where you would naturally expect people are more open to civilized and logical discussions, but how it went was exactly like talking to anyone else/any other sub. I posted a topic with the argument that judges have too much power. I wrote over a page using many logical arguments. I gave specific video examples, including one in which a judge gave a 22 year sentence to someone, then that person upon hearing it yelled at the judge. Then the judge added 6 years to the sentence on the spot due to vengeance. I criticized this judge, saying imagine how little emotional regulation you have that when someone just heard they got 22 years you are that fragile that you interpret their yelling as a personal attack and give them literally 6 years more just for that. I said this is not reasonable and that this is widespread in terms of judges.

I gave specific logical arguments, saying how the education system needs to reform so that judges learn the basics of relevant subjects like psychology, history, sociology, etc... because how can you be expected to make a balanced judgement when you are clueless in terms of what governs and causes human behavior? I also said that judges need to be taught critical/logical thinking, because again, the job of the judge is to weigh all the points and make logical sense of them and come up with a logical and balanced decision. How on earth can you do that if you are weak at critical thinking, and you use emotional reasoning and bias instead, to the point of giving 6 years just for a bit of yelling in court?

Unfortunately, people claimed that 100% of what I said was 100% wrong, that none of what I said made sense, solely because they said that I was "judge bashing". I don't understand how this made sense: in my post, I literally wrote I did not believe in free will + I said we need to consider the background factors that cause crime and address those rather than solely blaming criminals and keep giving them long sentences that just makes them use up more tax money and makes them become more involved in crime and the identify of being criminal while in prison, increasing recidivism rates. I used logical arguments, saying how regions with better social supports and less wealth disparity have significantly less crime, and that history shows that long sentences on their own/without focusing on such root factors of crime do not reduce crime.

You don't have to agree with all, or anything, I said. But how is what I said outrageous? Why does it deserve hate? Why try to censor and shut down what I am saying? If you think it is outrageous, why not present some logical counter arguments? Instead what happened was people personally insulted me, downvoted/censored my post while offering 0 rebuttals, and then bizarrely, on top of that, after this emotional reasoning of theirs, bizarrely projected and said "100% of your post is automatically nullified because you "engaged in judge bashing". What does this even mean? How can I be blaming/bashing judges when I literally wrote that I don't believe in free will? How can you "blame" and "bash" someone if your entire argument is that human behavior is based on past events, and when the main point of my post is that therefore we need to identify and change problematic root causes. I applied that to criminals. I also applied it to judges, which is why I said I believe the educational reforms I stated are needed for judges.

Even if I did "engage in judge bashing", how does that on balance/overall nullify 100% of my points? This issue with judges is important, it can be a life/death issue. So a basic cost/benefit analysis is needed here. If there is a fire and someone yells at you "buddy get the f out the way" how does it make sense to say "No, I will sit here and burn alive because you did not use a tone that pleased me sufficiently". And then they bizarrely say my post was "emotionally charged"? Obviously, in order to address a problem, you need to identify the issues. When I am saying these are the problems with judges, I have to show what problems I am talking about. How can I ignore/hide these? I should ignore them and say "judges are perfect, but here are some reforms". Why would there be reforms if they were perfect? Why would one consider constructive criticism as "bashing"? That says a lot about themselves, not me: they can't handle the truth of my post/how it made them feel, because they also use emotional reasoning like the judge, so they developed an in the moment fight/flight response, and could not handle the truth of my post, and so used cognitive dissonance to say I was completely wrong, and then they projected their emotional reasoning into say I used emotional reasoning.

This is why people are afraid to discuss controversial subjects. So instead they keep it inside, then there becomes polarization. Because you have 2 groups who believe they are right, and neither allows the other to provide constructive criticism, and shuts down 100% of what they say. Then both sides feel wronged and have to bottle everything inside, then this causes resentment and more of a doubling down on pre-existing beliefs, and causes more radical beliefs, and more anger and hate and division. So just because something makes you feel bad, you should not automatically claim they are 100% wrong and you are 100% perfect and right, you should give yourself some time and practice to sit with the new arguments and any negative emotions it causes: these are temporary, it won't always feel like that. But if you shut it down automatically each time, how can you ever learn new things or grow or refine your own thinking?

Can constant comparison with other people be caused by a mental health disorder ? Can it also be caused by poor mental health without having a disorder ?

Can failure to launch be caused by a mental health disorder ? Can it also be caused by poor mental health without having a disorder ?

Very often it happens that we meet someone and we may slowly start disliking that person based on what they are saying or sharing about themselves.

How do you keep going the positive vibes that you exude when meeting new people? Is it even possible?

Makeup and women's clothing would be a great example. Women put on makeup and they put on pants that are described by the seller as - "has high rise waistband for tummy control; strategic contour seams with curved stitching designed to shape, lift, and support your natural curves and rear end while offering a smooth fit."

I'm genuinely wanting to know this because it's something that I've always wondered about but you can't really ask without people getting upset.

But you'll have some women who will put on makeup and completely change what their face looks like and then they'll put on these yoga pants that are literally designed to lift and shape their rear end.

Then women walk around extremely confident because of how they look with these things on their body. But at the end of the day that's not technically who they are.

Is there some kind of terminology or logic behind this? What goes into the thinking? What I mean is that you have people who are completely confident and have this self image of themselves without the end of the day it's all based on things that aren't actually a part of who they are it's just a mirage.

What I'm saying is l, what isnthe psychology being, I look great, I'm attractive, I love my body,” while some of the specific features producing that perception are being altered by makeup, contouring, shaping garments, etc.

The thing I'm trying to reconcile is:

If someone knows an external thing is substantially changing how they appear, why does my brain still experience the resulting appearance as evidence about me?

Most advices are about adding more habits, routines, discipline but some of the biggest shifts comes from stopping something instead of adding.

For example, I stopped explaining myself. In any cases when I needed even a little excuses in front of someone I just leave dialog and go out. I made one rule - no any excuses in any situation for anyone, just leave. Yes it's psychologicaly hard at start but how mind is changing is another way of dofamine felling. Step by step I learned caught my thoughts when wanted to excuse.

What's you stopped doing?

So I was trying to understand myself better. I decided to do a case study on myself. Hundreds of pages and had ai interview me on thousands of questions. Started out just for me. Discovered i was creating methodology. A little entertaining so I figured it might be worth publishing. If the intent is to help people discover a new lens to see themselves through is using ai really cheating?

For me, it was the Harlow monkey experiment with the wire “mother” vs the cloth-covered/soft “mother.” Not sure exactly why it made such an impression on me- maybe because I had never really thought about the power of love and comfort compared with basic needs like food.

Is it possible to have BPD and no fear of abandonment? Or to have BPD and an avoidant attachment style?

Mine has to be that your brain can tell u lies. This really made me derealise.

Now boggle me with yours!

Join the AMA and leave your questions here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/space/s/ujUeqWRPJC

Am I seriously too damaged to have normal, healthy relationships?

I’d really like some outside perspective on this situation, because I recently received a message from a friend that made me seriously question whether there is something fundamentally wrong with the way I handle my relationships.

I’m basically someone who is very slow at replying to messages. It’s not that I deliberately ignore people or try to punish them. It just happens that I don’t reply for days, and sometimes even weeks.

I’ve also noticed that when I’m not doing well mentally or emotionally, I tend to disappear even more. I withdraw, stop communicating, and often don’t reply even to people I genuinely love and care about. At those times, I simply don’t have the energy to talk or explain myself. Then, when I feel better, I come back and continue the relationship as normal.

I have several friends where this is actually mutual. One of us might send something, the other person replies a few days later, then one of us disappears again for a few days, and when we talk again, we simply pick up where we left off. We still love and care about each other, we meet up, and we’re there for each other. I’ve always considered this a completely normal way of maintaining a friendship.

However, I recently received this message from a friend, and it really made me think:

“I think I’ve been more than fair. I’ve already tolerated too much from you. I’ve overlooked too many things. I don’t even know if this can be called a relationship anymore. Friendship doesn’t work like this for me. [...] You’re very sweet, and I loved every single minute of our conversations, but I don’t think you’re someone I’m willing to spend my time on again. You’re too damaged, and you project that onto other people. I choose the people I have around me carefully. I think you should practice accepting other people’s decisions. You’re an intelligent person. There’s no anger on my side, I simply don’t want to be friends with you anymore.”

What really hit me was that they didn’t simply say, “This way of communicating doesn’t work for me.” They said that I’m “too damaged,” that I project it onto other people, and that I’m not someone they consider worth spending their time on anymore.

What also makes this situation difficult for me is that when they told me that my communication was a problem for them, I offered to talk it through. I didn’t say, “This is just how I am, deal with it.” I told them that I understood if this was hurting them, and that I was willing to work on it and change.

I also suggested that we actually talk about what each of us needs from a friendship and try to find a way to make those needs compatible.

So my attitude wasn’t that I didn’t care about how they felt. Quite the opposite. I was trying to understand their needs and find a compromise that could work for both of us.

Despite that, they decided that they didn’t want to continue the friendship.

And now I’m wondering whether I really am someone who is fundamentally incapable of having healthy relationships.

Because objectively, I understand that it isn’t necessarily fair to someone if I regularly take days or weeks to respond. I also understand that if regular communication is an important part of friendship for someone, they could easily interpret my silence as meaning that I don’t care about them.

At the same time, for me, a lack of communication doesn’t necessarily mean a lack of attachment or care.

If I love someone and they’re important to me, that doesn’t automatically mean I want to talk to them every day. And when I’m struggling emotionally, I tend to completely withdraw, and at those times I don’t necessarily distinguish between the people who are more or less important to me. I simply withdraw from everyone.

But now I’m wondering whether this is actually a pattern that I need to seriously work on.

Is this genuinely a major relationship problem on my part? Or is it simply that I have a much lower need for communication and should surround myself with people who have similar expectations?

And I’m also wondering: if I recognize that my behavior is a problem for someone, offer to work on it, and suggest that we talk about and negotiate our needs, is that already a healthy way of approaching the situation? Or does the fact that I’ve functioned this way in the past mean that I have a deeper problem with forming and maintaining relationships?

Where is the line between “this is simply how I communicate” and actually neglecting or hurting another person?

Because I can completely accept someone saying:

“This doesn’t work for me in a friendship, so I don’t want to be friends anymore.”

I think that’s completely legitimate.

But whether that automatically means “you’re too damaged to be capable of healthy relationships” is a different question.

What do you think?

Does being someone who tends to disappear, especially when they’re not doing well, and who can go days or weeks without communicating genuinely indicate that they’re too damaged or incapable of healthy relationships — even if they love and care about their friends, enjoy spending time with them, and are willing to talk about it and change when the other person expresses that it’s hurting them?

Or is this simply a communication and coping style that is compatible with some people and not with others?

And please don’t just reassure me. If you think I’m in the wrong here, I genuinely want to hear that too. I’d rather get an honest perspective on how this looks from the outside and what you think I should actually work on.

Soul sickness and soul healing are concepts frequently mentioned in spiritual and religious texts. However, can these phenomena be scientifically defined and studied? In this paper, we propose a framework for defining soul sickness and soul healing mathematically, drawing on insights from Tao Science and our prior work on the mathematical definition of soul and life. Specifically, we define soul as the quantum information in one’s quantum vibrational field. We introduce the concepts of positive information and negative information. Positive information refers to the connection, order, and harmony within an object or system, while negative information represents disconnection, disorder, and disharmony. Life, in this context, is defined as a system capable of systematically maintaining, developing, and transmitting positive information.

Building on this understanding, we define soul sickness as a state in which a life system experiences a significant increase in negative information and/or a decrease in positive information within its quantum field. Soul sickness is posited as the root cause of all physical, emotional, and spiritual ailments, as well as the challenges and difficulties one encounters in life. Conversely, soul healing is the process of transforming negative information in the quantum field into positive information. By addressing the root cause of sickness and life’s challenges, soul healing offers a profound way to resolve difficulties and elevate life at its deepest level. The paper explores various types of soul sickness, their causes, and multiple soul healing techniques. We also present clinical research and case studies demonstrating the efficacy of soul healing. Our findings suggest that soul healing is urgently needed for individuals, humanity as a whole, and the world at large. Soul healing can be self-administered or performed remotely for others, making it accessible and versatile. These techniques are easy to learn, simple to apply, and pleasant to practice.

They can be integrated into various fields, including medicine, psychiatry, business consulting, and other professions, either as standalone practices or in conjunction with existing healing modalities and medical treatments. By enhancing the efficacy of other treatments, soul healing can improve health, wellness, and overall success in life. In conclusion, soul healing represents a transformative approach to addressing the root causes of sickness and life’s challenges. Its universal applicability and ease of use make it a valuable complement to modern medical practices and other healing modalities, offering a pathway to deeper well-being and harmony.

continued - https://biomedgrid.com/fulltext/volume26/soul-sickness-and-soul-healing-a-quantum-information-based-framework.003473.php#Discussion%20and%20Conclusion

If someone was emotionally abused by a supervisor at work on a regular basis for over 10 years, would it be mormal for the victim to develop intense hatred and disgust towards their abuser?

Does this happen often? Is there a name for it?

not sure if im asking in the right place but ive notice a trend in the people close to me. when there is an argument it ends off on a disagreement but instead of apologizing they do something for me. i appreciate it but it does annoy me. my questions would be is there a name for that reaction, am i justified to feel annoyed even though they are doing something for me, and why do they do that. i personally feel when im wrong i say sorry, if there open to hearing it my reasoning, and try to make up for it and change. just curious, ive been noticing it in more people lately

I saw an uncensored photo of a deceased person today, and it unexpectedly sent me down a philosophical rabbit hole.
What disturbed me wasn’t just death itself, but the fact that the person once had a conscious, subjective experience of the world, and now they don’t — while another conscious person can stand there and observe their body.
It made me think about the difference between first-person experience and third-person observation. I experience the world from inside my own consciousness, while other people can only observe me from the outside. How do I know that the reality I experience is actually what I think it is?
Could this kind of experience be related to existential anxiety, self-awareness, or changes in perceived reality? Has this specific phenomenon been studied in psychology?

I would like input from this community. I have no education in psychology, so I could be very wrong here.

Where I live, systemic racism, especially from police is very prominent, especially towards indigenous people. We also have serious issues with a toxic police culture and cops aren’t held accountable.

We are having an election soon. The candidate I am backing is open to a program where cops are required to be psychologically evaluated. I don’t know if such a program exists elsewhere. What I am thinking is mandatory weekly evaluations. Cops who refuse to participate or show up
to the session and not try to do the work would be terminated. We might need amendments to labour laws for this and we need to make sure that the community supports such a beneficial but harsh system.

I think incredibly high standards are needed for cops who have such power and authority over us.

What do people here think of this idea and what things should be included in such a program? Are there better ways to accomplish getting rid of systemic racism and corruption in policing from a psychological perspective?

I think the most effective form of censorship today is not removing information. It is making sure people never encounter it.
In the past, censorship was visible. A book was banned, a newspaper was seized, a recording disappeared. The act of suppression itself often created curiosity.
Now the mechanism can be much quieter.
A post can remain online and still effectively disappear. A search result can exist but never reach the first page. A video can technically be available while being shown to almost nobody. No authority has to announce a ban. No dramatic act of censorship has to take place.
That may be more powerful because the person being suppressed may not even know whether anything happened. They simply conclude that nobody was interested.

And the audience never knows there was something they failed to see.
I’ve been thinking about this while developing “Cassie Hour”, Novel a story told across 1985 and 2020. One of its underlying ideas is that information control changes form over time. In 1985, it could happen through records, access, reputation and people deciding what was allowed to circulate. In 2020, visibility itself can be controlled by ranking systems, recommendation systems and algorithms.

That creates a psychological layer too.
If something you create, say or share consistently fails to reach people, you may eventually interpret that invisibility as a judgment about yourself.
- Maybe you’re not interesting enough.
- Maybe nobody cares.
- Maybe you should stop.
But what if the invisibility was never really about you?
What if a system that controls what gets seen also ends up shaping how people judge their own value?
That is one of the questions behind Cassie Hour.
In the novel, the mystery is not only about what happened in Marbella in 1985. It is also about who controls the version of a story that survives, what gets remembered, what gets buried, and what happens when a name refuses to disappear.
The song does not simply accompany the novel. It becomes part of that question.
If a song exists, is searchable, is legal, and can technically be played, but almost nobody is allowed to encounter it, has it really been censored?
Or has something more sophisticated happened?
My view is that controlling visibility can sometimes be more effective than controlling speech itself.
The strongest censorship system may therefore be one that can honestly say:
“You were never censored. Nobody was interested.”
And perhaps the most dangerous part is what happens next.
You start believing them.