Kevin Tanaka
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Otto Kernberg explains narcissistic personality disorder as a defense mechanism: Kernberg is a 96-year-old Austrian-born American psychoanalyst, professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine, and the most-cited psychoanalyst in the world. His work helped shape how narcissistic personality disorder is defined in the DSM. He describes narcissistic personality disorder as one of the severe personality disorders—but one that operates differently from the others. Beneath the surface, these individuals have a borderline personality organization: a fragmented self-concept, unstable views of others, and an internal struggle between idealized and persecutory experiences. But rather than live in that chaos, they construct what Kernberg calls a "pathological grandiose self." "It is constituted by a combination of ideal aspects of the self, ideal aspects of others that have been incorporated as if one possessed them, and ideal aspirations of the self as if one had achieved them." In other words, the person absorbs the qualities they admire in others and treats their own aspirations as already achieved—building an internal world of grandiosity and self-sufficiency. The cost? Everyone else gets devalued. "Others are devalued; 'we don't need them, we are fine, I'm just great by myself, I don't need anybody else.'" Kernberg explains that the outside world then gets divided into three categories: depreciated, worthless people; those who are great and must be admired so their qualities can be absorbed; and potential enemies who must be fought off. This structure creates an illusion of stability. On the surface, the person appears integrated and secure—far more composed than others with severe personality disorders. But underneath the self-satisfaction and grandiosity lies "an incapacity to love others, and an internal sense of grandiosity and emptiness at the same time." There is no genuine mutuality in their relationships. They need admiration constantly but cannot reciprocate. In therapy, this dynamic plays out directly with the therapist. Kernberg describes a long-term power struggle: "They have to show their superiority to the therapist and keep themselves superior to the therapist because the only alternative is then if they would need the therapist, it means that the therapist is superior to them and they would feel immediately inferiorized and humiliated." The therapeutic work involves gradually clarifying and resolving this superiority-inferiority battle, which then reveals what was always underneath: "the underlying borderline structure against which the narcissistic structure was a defense"—the severe splits between idealized and persecutory relationships that the grandiose self was built to hide. The narcissistic personality, in Kernberg's framework, is not the core problem. It is the solution the psyche constructed to avoid an even more painful one.
Kevin Tanaka296,646 Aufrufe • vor 3 Monaten
In 1979, a Harvard psychologist sent eight elderly men back in time and their bodies followed. Back in the 1970s, psychologist Ellen Langer ran one of the most provocative experiments in the history of psychology. She invited eight men in their late 70s and early 80s to spend a week at a retreat. But when they arrived, something felt immediately off. The magazines were from 1959. The radio played music from the 50s. The TV showed old black-and-white programs. Every last detail of the environment had been wound 20 years into the past. Here's the twist: the men weren't asked to remember 1959. They were told to live as if it were 1959. They spoke about their careers in the present tense. They discussed world events as though they had just happened. They carried their own luggage, cleaned up after meals, and moved around like they used to. For a full week, they stopped seeing themselves as old men. And then something happened. Their bodies started to change. Tests conducted before and after the retreat showed measurable improvements across the board. Vision, hearing, grip strength, memory, flexibility, even posture. Arthritis symptoms improved. Independent observers, shown photographs of the men taken before and after, judged them to look an average of two years younger. After just one week. No medication. No surgery. Only a shift in environment and mindset. "Your body may be listening to the story your mind tells about what is possible." The study doesn't promise you can think yourself young forever. But it does suggest something worth sitting with: the body may take its cues from the narrative the mind keeps rehearsing. Think about how often you say things like: I'm too old for that. My back just does that now. I can't move like I used to. Those sentences don't land in a vacuum. The body hears them and sometimes, it obeys. The men in Langer's experiment didn't get a pep talk. They weren't told to think positively or push through the pain. The environment simply stopped confirming the story of decline and without that story running on repeat, something in them opened back up.
Kevin Tanaka182,277 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten
The CIA teaches this psychological trick to immediately gain an edge in any situation:
Kevin Tanaka273,774 Aufrufe • vor 4 Monaten
![Comedian Pete Holmes shares the simplest mental health tool he's ever used: "Yes, thank you." Pete was sent advance copies of his own book to send out to reviewers. When he looked through it, he realised it was three versions old filled with notes to himself, a placeholder word ("flappy") scattered throughout, and entire chapters he'd cut. "It was just my first book deeply disappointing." "You feel this like black cloud. You're just sad. Then you're embarrassed. To me it's the feeling and then it's the embarrassment that you have the feeling. It's worse than the feeling." But instead of spiralling, Pete applied the exact tool he'd written about in that very book. He said: "Yes, thank you." And it lifted. Pete explains why this works and it's simpler than any therapy framework or spiritual practice: "It just short-circuits your brain if you say yes, thank you to it. And I mean almost instantly in my experience." Flight delayed? Yes, thank you. Embarrassed about your own book? Yes, thank you. He breaks down the psychology behind it: "Everything [is] attraction and aversion. Aversion is just charging it with all of this push. Like a basketball underwater. So you're giving it all the energy." When you resist a bad feeling, you compress it. You give it power. "Yes, thank you" does the opposite, it stops the fight. And you don't need to make it profound: "It can just be a clean breath and a recognition that you're alive. And maybe you see the sun coming through the window." Most of our suffering is the layer of resistance we pile on top of it. The embarrassment about the embarrassment. The frustration about the frustration. "Yes, thank you" collapses that second layer instantly by simply not fighting it. "Really not debating with the bad feeling. Just saying yes, thank you to it. That's been one of the most powerful things in my life for sure."](https://image.24vids.com/tw-2041131422585700442/amplify_video_thumb/2041131367799685121/img/PRVyL2GV7bC-0YcJ.jpg)
Comedian Pete Holmes shares the simplest mental health tool he's ever used: "Yes, thank you." Pete was sent advance copies of his own book to send out to reviewers. When he looked through it, he realised it was three versions old filled with notes to himself, a placeholder word ("flappy") scattered throughout, and entire chapters he'd cut. "It was just my first book deeply disappointing." "You feel this like black cloud. You're just sad. Then you're embarrassed. To me it's the feeling and then it's the embarrassment that you have the feeling. It's worse than the feeling." But instead of spiralling, Pete applied the exact tool he'd written about in that very book. He said: "Yes, thank you." And it lifted. Pete explains why this works and it's simpler than any therapy framework or spiritual practice: "It just short-circuits your brain if you say yes, thank you to it. And I mean almost instantly in my experience." Flight delayed? Yes, thank you. Embarrassed about your own book? Yes, thank you. He breaks down the psychology behind it: "Everything [is] attraction and aversion. Aversion is just charging it with all of this push. Like a basketball underwater. So you're giving it all the energy." When you resist a bad feeling, you compress it. You give it power. "Yes, thank you" does the opposite, it stops the fight. And you don't need to make it profound: "It can just be a clean breath and a recognition that you're alive. And maybe you see the sun coming through the window." Most of our suffering is the layer of resistance we pile on top of it. The embarrassment about the embarrassment. The frustration about the frustration. "Yes, thank you" collapses that second layer instantly by simply not fighting it. "Really not debating with the bad feeling. Just saying yes, thank you to it. That's been one of the most powerful things in my life for sure."
Kevin Tanaka163,923 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten
Alain de Botton on why the most privileged children become the most ordinary adults: In a culture obsessed with raising "exceptional" kids, de Botton flips the entire script. He argues that the goal of a truly good childhood is to produce someone who can tolerate being ordinary. He explains it this way: "The great thing about early childhood in a good and loving family is that the child is a superstar. You know, they come in, they sing a song, everyone claps, they're happy. In the morning it's like the little prince has arrived, the princess is doing a pirouette." Most people assume that treating a child like the centre of the universe creates entitlement. De Botton says the opposite is true: "Entitlement comes from deprivation. The ability to absorb an ordinary life comes from early emotional privilege." The child who is never made to feel special is the one who spends their adult life desperately seeking that feeling in status, in recognition, in the need to always be the most important person in the room. The child who was made to feel special? They already have that tank filled. "If the child is able to be the centre of the universe in the early years, they will be able to accept without too much psychological damage a subsidiary position in adult life." This reframes what good parenting is actually for. It's not about engineering an extraordinary person. It's about giving a child enough emotional security that they won't be destroyed by the humbling realities of adult life. The overlooked promotions, the anonymous commutes, the slow, quiet days that make up most of a human existence. De Botton puts it plainly: "The need to be always at the centre and always important is a compensation. It's not a sign of health." And the ultimate destination of a healthy upbringing? "To accept ordinariness which is a massive challenge. All of us are in the end ultimately ordinary." The most grounded, secure, and genuinely content adults are the ones who were loved enough, early enough, that they never needed to.
Kevin Tanaka141,699 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten
Jordan Peterson on why social anxiety is really a self-focus problem: Dr Jordan B Peterson explains that social anxiety is fundamentally driven by excessive self-referential thinking. "If you're feeling social anxiety in a situation, part of the reason for that is because you're thinking about how you're feeling." He points to fascinating research on language patterns and mental health. When you analyze the words people use in speech and writing, a striking pattern emerges: the more someone refers to themselves, the more likely they are to be depressed or psychotic. "You can actually distinguish with 75% accuracy between people who are clinically depressed or clinically psychotic and people who aren't by the number of times they refer to themselves." The core insight is simple but powerful: "The more you think about yourself, the more miserable you are." But Peterson warns against the obvious trap in trying to fix this. You can't just tell yourself to stop thinking about yourself. That's still thinking about yourself, and you'll fall into the same pit. Instead, he offers a practical redirect: "If what you decide to do is to pay way more attention to the other person and try to make them comfortable, then that social anxiety will disappear." The solution is a redirection. Rather than fighting your own self-consciousness, you shift your entire attention outward. Make the people around you more comfortable. Focus on them, not on how you're coming across. It's a counterintuitive reframe: the cure for feeling awkward is caring less about your own performance and more about the person in front of you.
Kevin Tanaka108,555 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten
Jordan Peterson on why self-esteem is a myth and what actually builds real confidence. Most people spend years trying to feel better about themselves. They repeat affirmations. They journal their wins. They work on their "self-esteem." Peterson says that's the wrong target entirely. "Self-esteem… doesn't even exist by the way. It's just a pathological concept altogether." What you actually want is confidence. And not just any confidence, confidence grounded in competence. Otherwise, he says, it's just narcissism. So how do you build it? Not by changing what you say about yourself. Not by adjusting your self-talk or telling yourself you're capable. Those are surface-level fixes. The real mechanism is simpler and more demanding. "You watch yourself exceed your limits and then you think, 'Oh, look at that. There's something in me that can exceed my limits. That's your true self.'" Confidence is earned from the inside out through repeated experience of actually doing hard things. Dr Jordan B Peterson draws an interesting parallel. If you watch a friend making small, consistent improvements over time, you don't feel contempt, you feel admiration. Even if part of you is jealous, the healthy response is recognition: that's admirable.
Kevin Tanaka59,976 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten
The cheapest therapy in the world is a pen and five questions
Kevin Tanaka50,536 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten
Jordan Peterson on why crying means growth: "Children cry quite often and they cry when they encounter an impediment that they can't surmount." Dr Jordan B Peterson draws a striking parallel between adult tears and childhood development. He argues that crying is a neurological reset. "I think what tears do is dissolve you to the state of neurological plasticity that characterizes early childhood so that you can learn." In other words, when you cry, your brain is literally returning to a state where it's capable of being rewired. The same openness to learning that children have naturally, adults can only access through emotional breakdown. Peterson acknowledges this process is deeply uncomfortable: "People don't like that reversion. It's humiliating. But you have to break." He then explains what that breaking actually signals: "The crying is an indication that the current conceptual structure is insufficient. It has to die and then the tears come, and then now you're prepared neurologically to learn something new." This is the core insight. Your tears are a sign that your old way of understanding the world has reached its limit. The framework you've been operating with can no longer hold the reality in front of you, and it needs to collapse before a new one can take its place. Peterson describes what follows: "Whatever comes out of the discussion… will replace that old conceptual structure that's outdated and immature with a new somewhat fragile conceptual structure." The new understanding that emerges is fragile at first. It's not a finished product. But it replaces something that was no longer serving you.
Kevin Tanaka44,519 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten
Jordan Peterson on why you have to be willing to look stupid: In conversation with Andrew Huberman, Peterson shares a powerful reframe for anyone starting something new. Huberman sets it up: "Hopefully any especially young people listening need to know you're not supposed to perform well at the outset." Peterson responds by drawing on Carl Jung: "That's why Jung said the fool is the precursor to the redeemer. You have to accept the role of fool voluntarily before you can improve. Of course when you start something new you're going to be an idiot. Like, what do you know? So that's the price of entry, to be a fool." The key word is voluntarily. Peterson explains that being a voluntary fool changes everything: "You can be a voluntary fool and then you have a bit of a sense of humor about yourself, and that takes the sting out of it. And maybe even makes you an attractive character despite your ignorance. People will make tremendous allowances for ignorance that's voluntarily admitted to." Huberman echoes this from his own experience: "I've certainly made mistakes, publicly apologized for the ones that I felt I should apologize for. There's a slip of the tongue… went back and corrected. It was embarrassing, but the ability to laugh at oneself is tremendously powerful."
Kevin Tanaka37,685 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten
Gabor Maté on why women bear the greatest burden of illness: "Women have 70-80% of autoimmune disease." They're also twice as likely to be diagnosed with PTSD and far more likely to be prescribed anti-anxiety or antidepressant medications. During COVID, the New York Times ran a headline calling women "society's shock absorbers," describing how women took on the stress of their families and spouses, then felt guilty when they couldn't alleviate it. Maté argues there's nothing mysterious about these statistics once you understand what culture demands of women: "If you understand how the culture then imposes its own expectations on certain groups, adding to their stress, then there's absolutely nothing miraculous or nothing mysterious about why women have more autoimmune disease." He points to the patriarchal assignment of emotional labour as the root cause. Women are expected to absorb the stress of everyone around them and are made to feel guilty if they don't. As Maté puts it: "Women's guilt is another control mechanism on the part of the culture." He then raises a striking example: the changing gender ratio in multiple sclerosis. In the 1930s, the ratio was roughly one to one. Today, it's three and a half women to every man. Maté systematically rules out the usual explanations: "Can't be the genes, because they don't change in a population over 80 years. Can't be the climate or the diet, that didn't change more for one gender than another." What did change? The role women were asked to play. Women were already carrying the emotional weight of their families. But over recent decades, they've also taken on the role of wage earners driven by economic pressure on middle and lower classes and by their own desire to build lives outside the home. Maté is clear that this shift could have been manageable had one critical thing happened alongside it: The emotional burden being shared. "All of which would have been okay had the other role of sharing the emotional burden been shared. But it hasn't. It still falls upon women." The implication is sobering: the diseases women disproportionately suffer from aren't random biological misfortune. They're the physical cost of a culture that keeps adding to women's load without ever redistributing it.
Kevin Tanaka49,082 Aufrufe • vor 4 Monaten
This subtle hand trick makes people subconsciously agree with you:
Kevin Tanaka52,648 Aufrufe • vor 4 Monaten
Andrew Huberman on why you can't think your way out of stress: Huberman is asked what he means when he says you cannot control the mind with the mind. His answer reframes how we should approach stress, anxiety, and emotional regulation entirely. "If you're very upset, it's hard to talk yourself out of it. If you're stressed, it's hard to think yourself out of it." He explains that when we're in heightened emotional states, we tend to default to mental strategies, rationalizing, "third personing" ourselves, texting a friend, trying to reason our way back to calm. But according to Andrew D. Huberman, Ph.D., this rarely works: "It's very hard to get yourself out of those states with thinking alone." The solution, he argues, lies not in the mind but in the body. "The beauty of the autonomic nervous system is that it traverses the brain and the body and it connects to essentially all the organs of the body. And it's a two-way street such that certain behaviors, even certain patterns of breathing etc. allow us to shift between very very alert and stressed and very calm." This two-way street is the key insight. The body doesn't just receive signals from the brain, it also sends them back. Shifting your physiology shifts your mental state, which in turn shifts the kinds of thoughts and actions available to you. "If you're very very stressed, you're very very upset, two things happen. One, it's very hard to take your focus off whatever it is that's upsetting you. And if you don't know what's upsetting you, you know, pure anxiety, but you don't know why, it's very hard to take your mind off of the feelings of anxiety." In other words, anxiety hijacks your attention and then traps you there. Trying to think your way out only tightens the grip. The way out is to move through the body first: "If we turn to the body and certain behaviors, we are able to move ourselves along the autonomic continuum. And at that point, when we've done that successfully, we are able to think about things differently." "If you can't control the mind with the mind, look to the body to control the mind."
Kevin Tanaka27,792 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten
They envy you not because you shine loudly... but because your presence exposes what they have buried. The empath does not compete, dominate and or announce power. And that is precisely why resentment awakens in those around them. You reflect without intention the parts of others that never matured. The feelings they exiled to survive. In your calm attention, their inner poverty becomes visible. "What they call love is often a contract of unconscious hunger. They draw near not to know you but to drink from your depth." They approach to borrow your emotional coherence to regulate a psyche that cannot stand alone. Yet the moment they sense that you are not emptying yourself, that you remain inwardly whole, something turns. Admiration turns sour and affection becomes irritation. Care becomes subtle sabotage. In the shadow, envy is grief for a self they never integrated. Your empathy awakens this grief because you embody what they learned to renounce: sensitivity without collapse, warmth without submission, presence without self-betrayal. "To the undeveloped psyche, this feels intolerably unfair." So they praise you while resenting you. They cling while quietly wishing to diminish you. Not because you harm them, but because your being contradicts their inner compromise. You remind them, without words, of a life unlived. "Their envy is not a verdict on you." It is a signal of unfinished individuation. Do not explain yourself to it. Do not soften your boundaries to soothe it. The empath's task is to remain aligned with the self, even when that alignment makes others uncomfortable. "When love cannot tolerate your wholeness, it was never love. It was dependence wearing a mask." Jung's framework asks us to understand that the people who diminish empaths are not villains. They are unfinished. The shadow they project onto you is a map of their own unmet interior. And the only response that serves both you and them is the one they resist most: remain whole anyway.
Kevin Tanaka43,384 Aufrufe • vor 3 Monaten
The Emotional Risks of Skipping the "Rebellious Stage" Philosopher and author Alain de Botton on why adolescent rebellion is a psychological necessity. Most parents dread adolescence. But de Botton argues it might be the most important phase of your life and skipping it could haunt you for decades. Adolescence, that messy, tumultuous stretch between 12 and 19 is "commonly held to be a nightmare by parents," de Botton acknowledges. Lots of sighing. Lots of mutual commiseration. "When a child turns to its parent and goes, 'You ruined my life, I hate you, everything about you is ridiculous,' that is part of growth. That is part of a journey to adulthood." Without it, you don't become an adult. You become something far more fragile. The "Premature Adult" Trap De Botton draws a sharp distinction between a true adult and what he calls a "premature adult": "A premature adult is not an adult. They are a child who's had to act like an adult in order to protect the adults around them from their reality. And that's a brutal and cruel thing to have done to you." Children who never got to be messy, angry, or difficult didn't grow up. They just got good at performing adulthood and that performance has a cost. The Question You Should Ask on a First Date De Botton suggests that one of the most important things you could ever learn about a partner is whether they've had a proper adolescence: "Imagine on an early dinner date you say to somebody, 'Have you had an adolescence?' They might not really know what you're talking about, but what you're really asking is something extremely important." What you're actually asking is: Have you had a chance to be something other than merely good? Have you listened to your own feelings? Have you been angry in the way you needed to be in order to feel real? "Are you more than just an actor of adulthood? Are you actually mature, rather than a good boy or girl?" The Law of the Missing Stage The most sobering part of de Botton's argument is what he calls a fundamental law of psychological life: "If you haven't had all the stages that are necessary to growth, you will need to go back and repeat a stage. It's like a curriculum, an emotional curriculum. And the stages that we've missed, we need to go back and have them." This plays out in ways that can devastate relationships. People who never had their rebellious 15-year-old phase can suddenly "wake up" at 70 and need to live it out. The result? Chaos for everyone around them. "It's hard to be 15 when you're 50." What Parents Actually Owe Their Kids The most loving thing a parent can do is to let kids feel it fully, at the right age. "One of the most generous things that parents can do is allow their child to be who they are at every age. When you're five, have all the tantrums that you need to have at five." The tantrum at five. The rebellion at fifteen. The existential crisis at nineteen. These are signs that a child is being allowed to grow.
Kevin Tanaka32,642 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten
Gabor Maté on why he worries about "very nice" people and the hidden cost of people-pleasing People-pleasers didn't choose to be that way. According to physician and trauma expert Gabor Maté, they gave something up far earlier before they even had the words for it. "People pleasers are the ones who gave up not by conscious choice, but as a matter of survival, their authenticity in order to stay liked and accepted and attached." And once that pattern is set in childhood, it doesn't stay there. "They carry that on in the rest of their lives." And the consequences, Maté says, go beyond relationships they become a health risk. "I always worry for the very nice people." He draws a crucial distinction between two kinds of niceness: "There are two places to be very nice from. One is just genuine human compassion and concern for others but you're still grounded in yourself. That's great." The second kind is where it gets dangerous. "A lot of people are very nice because they are afraid not to be because they weren't liked who they were. They weren't loved for who they were. Being nice was their way of getting the love and the attention they needed." The difference isn't visible from the outside. Both people smile. Both people help. Both people say yes. But one is rooted. The other is running.
Kevin Tanaka28,428 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten
Gabor Maté: The parts of you filled with hatred, addiction, and self-loathing all deserve compassion. They came along to protect you. Most of us treat our darkest inner states like enemies to be defeated. The shame, the compulsions, the voice that says you're not enough. We want to cut them out. Gabor Maté sees it differently. "The parts most filled with hatred, the parts that are addicted, the parts that are even full of self-loathing, they all deserve compassion. They all deserve to be held and understood. And they all came along for a reason." That reason, he explains, is survival. When a child isn't getting their needs met or worse, is being hurt, they face an impossible situation. They can make one of only two unconscious assumptions about their world. The first: this is a terrible world, I'm all alone, everybody is against me. The second: there is something wrong with me, and if I work hard enough, maybe I can fix it. Which one can a child actually live with? "To assume that the world is that dangerous is just unbearable for the child. It's also turning the anger towards the adults against yourself which is a lot safer. It's not very safe to be angry with your parents all the time when you're 2 years old." So the child chooses self-blame. It's the only assumption that gives them any sense of agency. If it's my fault, then maybe I can do something about it. That self-loathing voice was a coping mechanism. A piece of the psyche that stepped forward to make life bearable. The work, then, isn't to silence or destroy these parts. It's to finally see what they were trying to do and to offer them the understanding they never received.
Kevin Tanaka27,318 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten