Locally Optimal

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Locally optimal psychology
There’s no way that chronic depression, self-loathing, poor agency, or muscle tension could be optimal… right?
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Chris Lakin
1
What if muscle tension is sometimes signal jamming?
Why do we often experience feelings as in the body? For example, why do I feel anxiety in my chest rather than just “knowing” I'm anxious?
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Chris Lakin
2
Learning to do *real* empathy
I lay there, eyes closed, trying to recall a time when I really felt. The question that had been nagging at me for months hung in the air: “What bad…
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Chris Lakin
1
Feeling part of a greater whole
Have you ever felt deeply connected to the world around you? Like your effortless existence makes a positive difference?
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Chris Lakin
What is it like to be psychologically healthy? Podcast ft. Damon Sasi
Damon Sasi is a mentor of mine, and he is also a therapist who claims to be very psychologically healthy.
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Chris Lakin
 and 
Damon P-Sasi
1:16:43
Eye contact is effortless without emotional blocks
So I wanted to run a fun party, “Make 100% eye contact or get sent to jail.” But I didn’t want eye contact to be forced, I wanted it to be genuinely…
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Chris Lakin
Pay-on-results personal growth: first success
A few months ago I made the claim “Radically effective and rapid growth [motivationally / emotionally / socially] is possible with the right combination…
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Chris Lakin
1
Feel Secure (Pay Only If It Works)
A man I met at a prediction market conference with lifelong social anxiety (unresolved by 8 years of therapy) became “excited about entering social…
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Chris Lakin
what becoming more secure does to a mfer
After I quit my first job two years ago, I was conflict-avoidant to the point of depression. I did ~nothing for five months and moved in with my parents…
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Chris Lakin
1
Exposure rarely rules out disasters.
Is there anything you avoid that exposure still hasn’t fixed?
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Chris Lakin
△ Growth pyramid scheme △
I received the following message not from someone I helped, but from the girlfriend of one of someone I helped:
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Chris Lakin
“Try to make me as anxious as possible.”
We had broken up a month earlier, but decided to spend Thanksgiving together as friends. On the first day, she tells me about her new partner. I ask…
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Chris Lakin
1
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