I'm grappling with an experience that might provoke some interesting commentary!

After 2 decades of high stress, I finally found peace. Yet, paradoxically, joy seems to have gone MIA. It's got me thinking, that joy may be the catalyst that drives us HUmans to explore, create, experience and build, while peace is content to simply exist.

I'm curious whether others have experienced this paradox. Escaping the chaos, finding inner peace yet discovering that the excitement, enthusiasm and desire for life that once drove me to achieve, seems to have disappeared!

Does the appetite for life return once the body and mind have fully recalibrated, or does peace fundamentally change what we seek from life?

I used to think that you could use charm and charisma interchangeably, but they're distinct from one another. How are they different?

I recently became very interested in Savant Syndrome after watching a Documentary on it and it's incredible. Just in case you don't know, it's an extremely rare condition which grants extraordinary abilities and major disabilities at the same time. It's usually linked to Autism Spectrum Disorder. Most Savants are born with it or develop it very young.

In the Documentary, one guy with Savant Syndrome was able to master the Piano in less than 3 weeks. He learned 15 years of piano practice in just 3 weeks which is incredible. I wish I could master an instrument in a few weeks. But at the same time, he can't perform the most basic household chores or care for himself due to major handicaps. He lives in a special needs home where social workers always look after him.

Another person with Savant Syndrome can instantly memorize any song she hears 1 time. She never forgets a single word and has thousands of songs perfectly memorized in her mind. But she can't do very basic math or tell Left from Right. She needs a Caretaker to accompany her whenever she goes outside, otherwise she gets lost and can't find her way back home. She also needs to live in a special needs home.

So I'm really curious what the syndrome actually does to the mind and brain? Does it "supercharge" certain parts of the brain, and impair other parts of the brain, which is why it gives superhuman ability but also major disabilities too? Does psychology and neuroscience even know the answer or is this still a total mystery for us?

Just look at all the dating and relationship subs! Not a single one of those people are mentally stable or healthy! Everyone wants to love and be loved intensely as if consuming love is this heavenly nectar, when in reality, heaven is the peace and tranquility of emotional bluntness, and after many years of suffering from depression, anxiety, and mania, I'm so glad I'm getting to experience this heavenly peace on Sertraline.

I am working on a personal project, and would love the opinion and critiques of a professional psychologist on my attempt at a simplistic model of the human behaviour, as well as ask a few specific questions about it (around 20-30 minutes should do).

I don't want to publicly reveal the model (it's nothing special and is pretty bad, hence the need for some constructional critique), I just want it to be a secret until my project is done.

I would really appreciate a voice call over discord or something else, but over text also works. As such feel free to dm me with your preferred method of communication, your discord id if needed, and your age. Thanks!

For a personal project, I am making an instagram for making psychology more widely available and allowing people to understand small (or big) issues in their lives through psychology (e.g. overthinking). I started with one post about overthinking and I would like some suggestions of what topics to cover. Feel free to check it out at psych.unravelled on instagram and share some topics that should be covered on there! its a fairly new subject so we are open to anything but focusing mainly on something a young adult or high schooler would be interested in/impaceted by.

I am including the instagram link to let everyone see the current state and theme of the project, NOT TO SELF PROMOTE

thank you!

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I've been thinking about something interesting about human behavior.

Sometimes we understand exactly why we do something. We recognize the pattern, know where it comes from, and even understand what we should change. Yet we keep doing the same thing.

Why is understanding our behavior so different from actually changing it?

I'm curious about what people think. Is it mostly habit, emotional attachment, fear of change, or something deeper?

I've been exploring these questions through psychology and would love to hear different perspectives.

TW: CSA/CSAM

I saw a tonight post about Ren & Stimpy's creator being a pedo.. and while I did not explore that topic, it reminded me that when we were like 8/9, my childhood best friend said that cartoon was perverted. I can remember him saying more or less that there are cartoons that are made to awaken/introduce those topics to children, something to that effect. Fast forward 20 years later, He is in prison for... you guessed it.

So my question- Was he already like that, That young? Was he Too aware for his own good? Did it work on him? wtf?

I am questioning the existence of cartoons with the intentions to pervert children (because honestly at this point I don't even know if my ex friend was propogandaning/trying to justify his own perception of it(?)) and/or whether or not my ex friend was already corrupted by that time. Or if he was successfully perverted by it. We were just so young it's just so hard for me to envision any of this.

there are many details omitted from this post, but I want to say that No I don't sympathize with him AT ALL. He should absolutely rot.

I'm very deeply traumatized by the whole thing so sorry if I articulated poorly. I am still navigating this

Have realized going new plalces and meeting new people benefits you.. for example, going to a place out of "habit" even when there's BETTER options ..

literally cheaper even closer options... Has anyone else found much better alternatives when you thought you had the best option figured out??

I know The Enneagram is widely disregarded as a pseudoscience by psychology, but is it simply innefective or does it have the potential to be something harmful?

Most people only engage with The Enneagram on a surface level and get the usual "You are a 1 because you value morality" or "You are a 6 and are anxious" type of descriptions, and those are pretty harmless. But once you dive into the books and stuff, especially the descriptions by Claudio Naranjo, it tends to get far more personal. I have a read a few of those descriptions (Both mine and some friends's) and they tend to portray your "inner self" as some monstrous caricature of your worst traits. Of course i know about the Barum Forner effect but if you pinpoint your subtype, the descriptions are very poignant, and especially in the sense they wanna hit you where it hurts the most, more than one friend of mine cried (Or came close to) after reading their own

I know some of the basics of Enneagram Theory and also how it generally conflicts with modern psychology, such as saying how what we call "personality" is actually a mask or false identity, essentially a bunch of coping mechanisms born from childhood wounds, and that you must "kill" or "break free" from your ego in order to reach enlightement. If this sounds like some spiritual nonsense, thats cause it kinda is, i do believe the original author said that he learned of Enneagram Theory from an archangel. The cult-ish undertones kinda worry me but thats not what i am talking about here

Either way, i feel The Enneagram has done some serious damage to my psyche ever since i started engaging with it, but i never heard of anyone else having a similar experience, so i wonder if its a "me problem" or not. Self-awareness is not most humans's strong suit, but i would describe myself as a stable and happy person just a few months ago, but The Enneagram Model made me believe many parts of me that i was completely fine with are somehow flaws, that the mental strategies or coping mechanisms i use to navigate life are flawed and damage me, essentially convinced me that i am somehow internally broken despite never feeling like i was before

When i tried to bring up this issue in Enneagram communities, i was met with dismissive remarks like "The truth is ugly and it hurts at first, but once you accept it, you will feel better", but i have always been the type to question things and that answer doesnt sit right with me, so i kinda wanted to ask for a 2nd opinion based on actual psychological knowledge

I dont really understand why this is such a contentious topic in psych circles, the people ive seen refute it agree that every symptom listed is a valid diagnosis so why is it suddenly questionable when theyre grouped together under a single diagnosis?

I'm 24F. Always been a people pleaser, always wanted to be liked above all, never felt i belonged anywhere and always felt boring and left behind, not worthy etc. I am still struggling with feeling my identity, with being "myself" (knowing what my preferences are, where does me end and the role i play to please begin).

I also struggle with talking. I am a talkative person, but i often shut down and can't bring a word out. Later on i feel bad with myself, becouse i leave whatever the situation with so many words unspoken. I am a good listner ofc and lately i found out it kills me - when i am left to be just the listner, to just sit there for an hour or two and listen about somebody elses stuff. It kills me, becouse when it happens, when i make space for people to confide in me, often when they are finished - i am unable to talk about myself. Even if they ask, even if they are interested... i just always feel like what i have to say isn't as interesting/important as theirs was, so i shut down. My best friend whom i love very much is often triggering me. We have very diffrent lives - i am lonely and nothing ever goes on with me in that departmenr while she's having a very busy love life. She talks about it a lot, understandably. Thing is, i often feel pathetic and broken after these talks. After constantly hearing stories from her i suffer even more becouse of my loneliness, but i also shut down even more and loose the ability to talk about me at all, feeling like compared to her i am a one boring sorry ass person.

It is not her fault. I also know that i have things to talk about, even if they aren't romance-related, but i have a ton of sad belives blocking me. What oh what can i do?

This is nearly impossible. So one is confronted with an enormous task: one has to essentially educate themselves against themselves.

Problem: there aren’t enough competent psychologists, and many simply don’t have access. But people still need to be psychologically healed.

Peter Fonagy saw this problem and tried to address it with other psychologists by training more psychologists. But the need is still too great.

In the absence of access to competent help you are basically forced to read the right books if you want to move in the direction of psychological healing.

One more angle is that society needs people to go through psychological healing. But this option isn’t available to large quantities of the population. Because of this we shouldn’t reject the pursuit of self-education toward psychological healing. Instead, it should be consciously embraced and both refined and clarified by mental health professionals.

I kinda feel like if so many people didn't live--or feel like they 'were--alone, the death thing wouldn't come up quite so much.

Hey I’m trying to reach out to this particular portion of the community.

At the moment it’s mental health month here in Australia and I’ve found a great resource and I’ve had a lot of help from local businesses to print it and a lot of local businesses have agreed to distribute these materials but I’m wondering if I’ve potentially identified a gap in the system locally and if so,is this occurring elsewhere?

Interesting how the most upvoted comment is how AI can be used to help with individuation. It seems AI being released to the public allowed it to have an impact psychology simply by letting people know that they can use it for understanding their questions about psychology and themselves and the ai engines keeping awareness of how people think. There was no need for psychologists to have to train them.
It makes me wonder if a person can create a new form of psychology intervention based on the knowledge they get from AI if they are properly trained, rather than a person who is properly trained being put in charge of creating a new ai psychology chatbot,

We've all seen them, they write posts on mental health support forums, mentoring forums about the sadness in their life, what's making them stressed anxious and depressed about themselves and their lives.

Like a post I noticed from an account I swear was on another website writing the same life story about why they feel the way they are, usually low self esteem, insecure etc.

A lot of it is feeling sorry for themselves.

You give them advice,so does everyone else, do the best they can, tell them of professional help they could get, I've seen people spend a lot of their time spending so much of their time writing a long post, in the hope it helps them, pushes them...

But a few days later, month, or even year, they're back, same story,same or similar problems.

Why bother? What do they hope to achieve?