Most people take medication to solve a problem that really exists in their relationships.
70% of divorces are initiated by women, But as a couples therapist, I’ve never seen even one divorce where the husband didn’t have attachment issues.
Husbands who complain about having zero sex have no idea how the female sex drive actually works.
Male depression is nearly always a result of learned helplessness, but health providers treat it like female depression and try to make men feel loved instead of powerful.
If your child is an asshole, it’s your fault. Even if it’s the other parent’s fault, it’s your fault for picking them. Take some responsibility.
If you find your teen cutting and your ongoing plan is to scream at them every time you find out they did it, you’ll probably never meet your grandchildren.
Threatening your drug-abusing teen to make them stop using drugs works about as effectively as threatening a shark to go vegan. The problem isn’t the behavior, it’s what sort of animal your parenting has turned them into.
Every divorcing couple I ever treated had at least one partner with an attachment issue. Divorces between two healthy people just don’t happen.
Daycare has been shown to harm attachments, especially for babies. Their mental health outcomes later in life are impacted.
Saying this out loud can get you fired.
Most people don’t want to hear the truth. They want to feel good about giving up.
Most couples entering couples’ therapy are there because one has given up and wants an excuse to prove it’s not their fault. The other truly believes they can make the relationship work.
About half of parents who put their teens in therapy want the therapist to fix their kid because they can’t be bothered building a healthy relationship with their own child.
Most people in therapy are there because of the people in their life who actually needed therapy refused to get it.
Parents willing to put in the work to help their children heal from anxiety and depression are worth their weight in gold. But they’re few and far between. Most spend more time selecting their next Netflix show than paying attention to their child’s wellbeing.
Latent anxiety is nearly always the result of attachment issues. But most people with anxiety don’t know this because their attachment issues have been with them as long as they can remember, so they don’t know any different. And many don’t even know they have anxiety.
People think you only get PTSD from war or rape. It’s not true. People think you can get PTSD from not being validated.
It’s not true.
For most people, the cycle of mental health looks like this:
Attachment issue ➡️ Anxiety ➡️ Depression
Except for severe cases which often look like this:
Trauma ➡️ Attachment issue ➡️ Anxiety ➡️ Depression ➡️ Panic attacks ➡️ Manic episodes
People are more likely to take a pill for years that they don’t understand and don’t think will actually help than they are to attempt even one uncomfortable conversation that could save their life.
Most cases of depression are a natural response to our broken society. We gain much of our sense of worth, purpose, meaning, and joy from our relationships. But those relationships have never been more systematically destroyed than they are today.
Depression may serve a very real biological purpose. If you’re stuck in a bad situation that’s unhealthy for you, for a long time, there is benefit in becoming so miserable that you lose your filter and tear it all apart.
Most women communicate with men using methods that only work for women. When they don’t get the response a woman would give them, they think men are rejecting them. They agonize over what they could have done wrong to be treated this way.
Most men have no idea this is happening.
Most men don’t know how female communication works. They provide solutions, which is what THEY would want, when a woman wants VALIDATION.
When this is pointed out, most men assume it’s untrue. Because they’d hate to receive only validation instead of a solution.
The female sex drive runs on intimacy. Intimacy depends upon emotional security and attachment strength. Both of these are dependent upon both partners working as a partnership.
Even the slightest issue can derail the female sex drive. It’s a great litmus test for a relationship
Most women with attachment issues ramp their sex drive through the roof at the start of a relationship and then nosedive the moment it becomes secure.
And they hate themselves for both sides of it.
I have never met a young woman with sexual trauma who didn’t believe it was somehow her fault.
Part of this is the need to believe she can prevent it in the future. Admitting it’s beyond her power is worse than feeling guilty.
A woman’s sex life can actually be better after she heals from sexual trauma than before the trauma happened.
This is entirely dependent upon her taking a proactive and intentional approach to emotional partner engagement, communication, and understanding her natural sex drive.
Most people with PTSD don’t know they have PTSD. And most of them refuse to believe it even when they’re shown the diagnostic criteria they just admitted to.
Most depressed men probably don’t need medication. Even then ones who do need it need more than just medication.
Depressed men need purpose, a mission, and the power to accomplish that mission.
Give a man those 3 things and he can crawl over broken glass with a smile.
Bad insurance company practices are a big reason most patients won’t seek therapy.
And a big reason there aren’t more practicing therapists to bring the cost down.
It’s okay to be sad. That doesn’t mean you’re depressed.
It’s okay to be worried. That doesn’t mean you’re anxious.
It’s okay to experience trauma. That doesn’t mean you have PTSD.
Not everything is a diagnosable issue.
Most men won’t get therapy because most therapy is aimed at helping women heal, not men. Each requires a different method, and even individuals have different needs.
Men are not wrong for this. The field is wrong for not providing clearer options for people with different needs.
Most people are looking for talk therapy but really need solution-focused therapy.
Most therapists are trained to never provide solution-focused therapy in order to validate their clients.
Most couples say they value communication but then run their relationship as if ever mentioning the problems under the surface will destroy the whole thing.
“We’re only together because we don’t mention what’s wrong! We can never discuss it!”
Imagine running a business this way
The best couples have business meetings to discuss the state of their relationship.
They address problems together with a solution-focused approach and guarantee mutual fulfillment.
Because a lasting marriage is more like a business than a fairytale.
A husband and wife with attachment issues can usually survive until they have kids.
Then the wife sees the kids struggling without a healthy bond to their father and begins treating him like a threat to “her kids”.
He usually has no idea why she’s slowly turning on him.
A damaged man is incapable of love because he does not believe love will be freely given, only earned through works.
He seeks false intimacy in lust and mistakes sex for acceptance. These men seek insecure women who believe themselves unlovable and who use sex to earn approval.
Most young women who experience rape only recover when they accept that the rape was actually nothing personal, because the attacker was incapable of loving attachment and did not view them or anyone else as a human and only as an object.
Most are shocked, then relieved.
Most women are disgusted when they finally learn how the male sex drive works. Then they test to see if it’s true, and when it is, they start to like the new power they hold.
Women are insecure about details. Men don’t notice details. Men notice body parts
No man ever said, “Hey, one of her nipples is slightly larger than the other”
But every woman knows which of her nipples is larger than the other and is terrified her partner will leave her for it.
Most women spend their time worrying about the man they love noticing imperfections that only another woman would ever notice.
Few women realize that you cover imperfections by distracting men with accentuated body parts.
Flaunt what you’ve got. He won’t care about the rest.
Too many people reading this thread have no idea what “attachment” means
It’s the most important thing in a human life, but our society has downplayed it so hard that we don’t even teach it anymore
Ancient societies made it their main focus because attachment is life itself.
Most people would be better off breaking their phone in half and never touching the internet again
Teen depression and suicide rates skyrocketed in 2007 when the first iPhone released
But most people will take a pill and binge Netflix instead.
Most anxious women are so preoccupied with worrying what their husband or boyfriend expects that they forget to ask him.
Of the few who do think to ask him, most believe he’ll be too nice to tell the truth.
Those who do ask usually can’t believe his answer.
Insecure men spend so much time trying to please their wife they way they pleased their own mother that they force their wife into a mother role.
Then they wonder why she doesn’t initiate sex anymore.
Many insecure women would rather open an OnlyFans account and get validation from strangers than have a brutally honest conversation with the man they love about what he expects.
Because strangers just want her body. And most insecure women don’t believe they’re worth loving.
I’ve got a ton of people asking me to define attachment. It’s my clinical specialty. Here’s an excerpt from one of the books I’ve written on the subject. There’s a section in here titled “What is attachment?”
Most wives in bad marriages who resent their husbands are really angry at the emotional pain their kids endure in the relationship with their father, the husband.
Most husbands would be better off fixing things with their kids first.
Most husbands will never realize this.
Most men have absolutely no idea how to talk to their wife.
Their wife says, “Talk to me!” and he answers, “What am I supposed to say?”
Women develop emotional intimacy through talking. Men don’t know how to do this.
Women tend to be happiest when they feel USEFUL to the people they love. They also want to feel TRUSTED with inside information about how you’re doing and what your challenges are, again so they can HELP and BE USEFUL.
VULNERABILITY indicates huge trust.
Emotional intimacy is an aphrodisiac.
Most people have no idea what “emotional intimacy” even means.
OnlyFans is popular because actresses can provide the ultimate digital girlfriend experience to men desperate for love and sexual approval.
Male customers offer the actresses concrete financial assistance and thus feel like good providers in return for earned sexual attention.
OnlyFans is psuedo-pairbonding. It’s having a wife in your pocket who will give you sexual attention at the press of a button. Sending her money releases dopamine as a provider
And she’ll never press you emotionally or reveal your deepest secret: That you feel innately unlovable.
Our society obsesses over one kind of health and ignores others.
“Whoa don’t swallow that laced ecstasy, your dealer’s not wearing his COVID mask.”
“But Sarah, I cant smash strangers in the bathroom SOBER.”
And we treat this thinking as normal.
Some people actually believe you must have sex with someone before you marry them to make sure it’s good sex.
As if sexual behavior is innate and not cultivated through deep communication and sharing of needs.
These people want physical intimacy without emotional intimacy.
So many have their first panic attack and believe it’s a heart attack instead.
An issue with insecurity and anxiety is often an issue with principles.
Post-traumatic stress is intensely real, but so can be Post-traumatic growth. Healing allows you to harness your experiences for strength.
Humans structure music according to their mother’s heartbeat from the womb. Slow music makes us tired because slow heart rate means sleeping, and fast music in action movies makes us feel something is about to happen because she experiences a surge of adrenaline with fast beats.
If you’re geared 100% toward earning approval from others out of constant fear of abandonment then sex becomes a performance based on fear of doing it wrong and the other person abandoning you.
Orgasm can be almost impossible under those conditions.
Female arousal is based on emotional intimacy and perceived security, which attachment issues undermine. And if all her sex is a performance there’s no focus on her own body, it’s on maximizing approval earned by boosting her partner’s pleasure.
Women shackled by the belief they’re innately unlovable and have to earn approval by being perfect are gonna have a pretty terrible time ever achieved orgasm because they’re too distracted. And frankly, losing control is frightening and embarrassing. What if they orgasm wrong?
There’s a whole lotta people worrying about things they can’t change,
And ignoring things they can.
Mental health is all around us. If you struggle with personal issues you certainly don’t have to speak out. But remember that people around you may be suffering in silence and feel all alone in their struggles.
Sometimes sharing your own story encourages others to get help.
It’s not your job to convince people of the truth. Sometimes they will hate you for speaking it. That’s not about you, it’s about them.
Sometimes your only job is to plant the seed. When they’re ready, they’ll remember.
But don’t burden yourself. You’re not everyone’s savior.
It’s okay to have days where you’re not productive. Healing days are incredibly valuable. Enjoying the life you’ve built encourages you to work hard later.
The problem comes when you tell yourself you need a year of healing days in a row.
Find a realistic balance point.
Most people try to heal burnout by taking a vacation. But they come back just as miserable as when they left, if not MORE miserable.
Research shows that overusing one part of the brain causes burnout. Stimulating a different part is often what heals you.
Give it a try.
Most people aren’t ready for their dreams to come true.
If you’re constantly run into the ground by dramatic people who control your life,
They can’t control you unless you allow it. You’re the one giving them the power. What are you getting in return?
What are you willing to give up to take back that control?
Most people who grow up in broken family systems don’t realize their family is unusual.
They adopt horrible behaviors that help them survive the broken system. Then they go out into the world and seek out people who match their behaviors.
Then they build a second broken family.
Most women who have to see their ex get dressed to the nines to show him what he’s missing.
Then she wonders why he’s always trying to crawl back into her life.
Don’t do this. Dress like a slob. Forget bathing for a day or two. Disgust him.
Watch him avoid you like the plague.
You are better than your worst mistake that you still measure yourself by.
The fact that you’re still bothered by it proves you’re better than you were then.
You control exactly one half of every relationship.
The best thing you can do at the start is make sure both sides operate in good faith. Good faith can help you overcome any problem together.
Learn how to differentiate between good and bad faith actors for next time.
Many people will ask your opinion. Most just want to hear what they already believe. A few want to hear the real truth, but will get angry about it. A tiny sliver will treasure the actual truth.
Most people who think they don’t want kids had really terrible parents, and the fact they’ve rejected that parenting style so completely means they’d probably make pretty great parents themselves.
Sadly, those who actually do want kids often don’t learn this until it’s too late.
The easiest way to be miserable is to focus on what makes you happy in the short term.
The best way to be happy long term is to stop worrying about your short term happiness.
Many people who think they’re chemically depressed and are taking antidepressants actually have bad brain health. They’d be better off with a treatment that includes diet change, exercise, sunlight, and natural hormone balancers. Their providers will likely never tell them this.
If you’re over 18, your relationships are exactly as bad as you allow.
Nobody has the right to treat you badly.
You’re still going to have to stop them. Bad people don’t stop doing bad things until they have to.
If you’re a single parent and refuse to allow your kids to see their other parent just because that parent hurt your feelings, you don’t actually love your kids.
Wonderful people will treat you with respect.
Good people will treat you well when you express how you’d like to be treated.
Mediocre people will treat you okay as long as you point out why their hurtful behaviors are wrong.
Bad people will hurt you as long as you allow it.
Some fathers actually don’t deserve to see their kids.
These evil men are used as leverage against good fathers in bad relationships.
The public school system treats boys like defective girls.
Then raises girls to act more like boys.
Check the CDC’s medication rates for ADHD in boys and anti-depressants in girls.
Sometimes Vitamin D is a better anti-depressant than anti-depressants.
Few providers try this easy trick first because most consumers just want the pills as fast as possible.
It’s not all the pharmaceutical companies’ fault.
Many people know that Vitamin D can help with depression but few realize the human body requires Magnesium to make use of that Vitamin D. Fewer still understand the role of Magnesium is stress management and anxiety control.
Since some people have asked, here’s a detailed write-up on applying Evolutionary Psychology to help couples understand each other’s needs.
Many depressed people have good reason to be depressed. They’re reacting correctly to bad circumstances and learned helplessness.
What most of them need is a mentor to help them fix their problems. What most of them get is medication.
Gender reactionaries on both sides use evolutionary psychology to justify maintaining their broken attachment.
Men and women both have destructive behaviors. These can be subverted in healthy relationships. But it’s easier for both sides to declare the other irredeemable.
If you attribute negative qualities or behaviors to “all women”, you’re justifying your fear of women.
The same is true when you say “all men”.
Only one of these is acceptable in polite society.
It is enormously profitable to convince people their irrational fears are true, and their problems are unfixable.
Businesses prefer subscription customers over single-purchasers. Why would for-profit healthcare be any different? Or for-profit societal influencers?
Wives often outlive their husband. They make sure their sons and daughters carry on the family vision in the years after his death.
That means she needs to believe in the vision and hold it personally to her heart as her own truth.
A stupid man disregards his wife’s counsel.
No matter how much money he provides to his family, a husband can’t make up for a lack of integrity.
And no wife can provide enough value to make up for sabotaging her husband’s mission.
Stability over resources. Reliability over pleasure.
Pain is just information.
Feelings are just information.
Both tell you when something is wrong, when something is right, and when the situation clicks.
They cannot run the show, because they are short-term information. Pain and feelings do not tell you what is best long-term.
We’ve done away with teaching children to build character. Now we instruct them to assemble an identity from things they hope will make them interesting enough to earn love.
The secret legacy of abusive parents is the gaps in later generations.
The next generation may recognize the abuse and force themselves to stop in order to be better for their kids. But they never learned the GOOD things to do.
Their kids don’t get abused, but they miss out.
If you provide a roof, and food, and safety, and all the things a government agency could provide, but fail to nurture your child’s mental and emotional needs, you’ve failed as a parent.
Parents must provide more than just a paycheck.
There are parents in prison right now working harder to be long-distance present in their child’s life than many parents who live with their kids every day but overlook their emotional needs.
If you’re depressed, do yourself a favor: Before you start taking medication, try:
Getting sunlight
Starting an exercise routine
Being honest with the people in your life
Building your relationships
Facing your fears
Medication is meant to lift you up enough to start these.
Men, if you’re feeling rundown, desperate, and can’t snap out of it:
1) Check your Magnesium and Vitamin D levels
2) Daily exercise
3) Build a structured daily routine
4) Spend more time with close friends on purpose
5) Eat at your top 5 favorite restaurants
Get started today.
In a world that doesn’t believe in love, the most radical act you can perform is to love someone who doesn’t believe they’ve earned it.
To overpay with your love, and when they point it out, to tell them to keep the change. And then you keep loving them.
This changes the world.
Your feelings should inform your decisions, not make them for you.
Women don’t trust an unstable or unreliable man. It’s not the:
Whining
Flaking
Lying
Sneaking
Excuses
that specifically erode her trust. These are symptoms of a deeper instability that rings all her alarm bells. She can forgive specific behaviors, but not the underlying issue.
What makes more sense: Dumping poison in one end of a pond and pumping it out on the other side, or not dumping in poison at all? The system dies before it reaches the filtration side, right?
Your body works the same way. Exercise and medication on one side can’t fix a bad diet.
Fun fact: The #1 quoted spanking study groups a light barehanded slap on the wrist with beating the child with a 2×4. They’re the same category vs no physical discipline.
Study results: “People who take no drugs have better outcomes than people who use drugs like aspirin/meth!”
Millions of American men can’t even remember the last time they got a hug.
Most remember every compliment they’ve ever received because they live on ONE PER YEAR.
Compliment a guy in your life. Your kind words may help him through a dark time.
You might save a life.
Don’t forget to treat yourself once in a while, even if it’s something small. Celebrate your wins and let yourself feel the progress in your life.
Don’t stop. Replace.
Focusing on NOT thinking about a pink elephant makes you think about a pink elephant. But thinking about a red tiger instead will erase the pink elephant from your awareness.
Apply this principle to replace bad habits and thoughts with good ones.
Replace.
Too many parents spend the first eighteen years ignoring their kids for work and the next 50 years wondering why their phone never rings.
Our kids only chase us for our attention in childhood. We’ll spend the rest of our lives chasing them for attention.
Will your phone ring?
All children disappoint their fathers and fall down.
Some fathers help their child to stand back up.
Other fathers stomp on their child and curse them for falling.
Only one of these fathers will know their grandchildren.
If you were abused as a child and haven’t spoken out about it yet and worry that people will demand to know why you never said anything,
It isn’t a child’s job to figure out how to speak about abuse. Or even a traumatized adult’s job.
It was your abuser’s job NOT to abuse you.
If an evil person wasn’t afraid of the truth, they wouldn’t try so hard to silence you.
If you’re keeping a secret you shouldn’t be keeping, you actually have all the power in your hands. Don’t let anyone force you to keep an evil secret.
People are afraid to come off like a jerk.
But a lot of your problems could be solved in advance by being more of a jerk.
It is a blessing to others to allow them to bless you.
To be truly thankful for a gift grants the giver tremendous joy.
To let someone help you allows the helper to become a person who does kind deeds.
To allow goodness in others is a blessing to them.
Attachment is the foundation of everything else. Family. Romance. Friendship. Even religious faith.
The majority of car accidents happen within a few miles of home. And the death rate on appendix removals are unreasonably high. When we do something a thousand times we put it on autopilot and end up causing disasters.
Are you doing this in your relationships?
Anxiety is your brain worrying what COULD happen.
When you run away, your brain learns that situation is definitely to be feared, and that running away helps. You build a worse pattern.
Facing your fear shows your brain what ACTUALLY happens. That diminishes your anxiety.
We are often afraid of confronting an old nemesis (an abusive parent, an ex, etc) because we fear we will act like the person we were when we let them hurt us.
This fails to honor the person you have become. Remember who you are now.
Move forward as your full self.
If you’re enjoying this thread, listen to @ChrisWillx and I discuss several of these harsh truths and how to apply them to your life.
If your lifestyle comes at the expense of your children, that’s not a lifestyle. That’s failure.
A parent has no higher calling than to raise a healthy child. Any choice that gets in the way of this duty is an abdication, no matter how gilded.
Life is built on actions, not feelings, the same is true of your identity.
The goal of mental health isn’t some standardized perfection. It’s to attain full functioning in work and love, whatever that looks like for an individual, in such a way that they’re truly fulfilled
Stop labeling functional atypical neurology as disordered. If it works, it works.
If you find yourself thinking “It’s fine, my kids can handle what I’m about to do to them”
Remember they’ll say the same about you when it’s time to move a thousand miles away and only let you see your grandkids over short Zoom calls.
Some people will look at their friend having an affair and say “That’s none of my business”.
The integrity of the people in your life is 100% your business. Especially if you have children.
You and your spouse should be lifelong partners in the ultimate business: creating a lasting legacy.
Speaking badly about them behind their back is a loud signal that everyone should avoid you at all costs. If you’ll do that to your closest partner, what won’t you do?
There are SO MANY incest rape survivors in America, and their suffering is swept under the rug because it’s uncomfortable to think about.
Meanwhile, incest is portrayed as a consensual spectacle by shows like Game of Thrones.
If you’re one, you are not alone. And there is help.
Stop obsessing over being liked.
First, be someone YOU respect, then look at who respects or disrespects the person you respect.
Don’t go into business with someone if you’d need to check the balance sheets every month.
Don’t sleep with someone if you wouldn’t trust them raising your child.
These are simple principles that will save you much heartache. They only require basic discipline.
How many men who complain there are no good women left also jerk off hourly to amateur porn and follow nothing but sex workers on social media?
Confirmation bias through daily experience is real.
Too many red-pill alpha guru types take advantage of attachment issues to score cash from wounded men and encourage them to embrace their attachment wounds even further. It turns into a cult of people convinced their wounds are sacred truths.
Some people don’t believe it’s possible to get better. They’ll attack you for offering hope because you make them afraid: Afraid to try and be disappointed, and afraid of not trying and missing out. Attacking you is their way of managing that fear.
Don’t let them silence you.
If you’re still waiting for your bad parent to wake up one day, walk through your door, and announce they finally realized they haven’t loved you enough and they’re here to be the parent you cried yourself to sleep wishing for,
Stop waiting. Be the better person you wished for.
I’ve watched guys build 6-figure businesses and leave their kids broke. Or stay glued to their phone 24/7 running the business and ignore their own kids while talking about how family values drive their company.
If money is your god, there is no afterlife. There’s not even life.
Love is not a feeling. Love is taking consistent action that’s truly best for someone. Especially when it’s against your self interest. The more it costs you, the greater your love.
If you feel affection but never sacrifice for that person, you only like the idea of loving them.
Pro tip: If you share that someone has hurt you and their first response is to complain that your admission hurts them,
They don’t love you.
You wouldn’t stab someone and pretend you were the one bleeding, but abusers do this emotionally in their relationships every day.
When a husband posts about his wife and says,
“She’s so great, I can’t believe she’s put up with me for X years, I owe her everything, I’m like a rotting skunk carcass compared to her perfection”,
I am not confident in the actual health of their marriage.
Men, don’t do this.
The relationship is not the feelings.
The feelings can inform about the relationship’s fulfillment level for each involved individual,
But if your relationship is peaceful on top and secretive, it’s a bad relationship. If the truth comes out and feelings are rough, it’s better.
You can improve a relationship by temporarily making the feelings worse. Even if that lasts for an extended period as both sides work through their issues and come to a better understanding.
A relationship based on truth is how you reach TRUE good feelings and real health.
A lot of people are obsessed with politics to distract themselves from their broken life. At least with politics they believe someone ELSE can fix the problem.
It is not possible to surrender your principles for approval without hating yourself.
Many people who hate themselves don’t understand that they’ve surrendered even HAVING principles. They’ve given up on standards in the hopes of earning approval from others.
Male depression is often a correct response to a life without meaning.
Female depression is often a correct response to a life without love.
Listen to what depression is telling you. Learn from it. It’s pointing you at the poison. Then find someone to help you fix the problems.
Anxiety makes you think you can’t live your life, because you need to stay on guard instead.
Staying on guard robs your life of meaning and intimacy.
That leads to depression.
Believing this cycle is normal makes you believe it can’t be fixed.
That makes you suicidal.
Most people with overwhelming anxiety will not fix it because they don’t realize that living with overwhelming anxiety isn’t normal. It feels as natural to them as breathing.
But if you feel pain, your body is saying you’re doing something wrong. Pain-free is the natural state.
If you’re in emotional pain, your brain is telling you there’s a pain-free state you need to reach. That requires work. You may be too exhausted to do the work. That’s when help is needed. But your pain is telling you there’s a better way to live, and it’s gonna make you reach it.
You can surrender your principles to earn approval, or you can respect yourself.
Pick one.
If you hate yourself, Imagine you have a friend named Sam who’s identical to you in every way. Same life, same problems.
How much would Sam need to do to earn your respect? Not much, right? Just a small amount of improvement each day. To try.
That’s what you need to do.
The scary secrets we believe will destroy our whole world if they ever come to light can be the seeds of the sweetest fruit. Because the shameful secrets we keep are so often born of fear and loneliness. Sharing them dissolves them and brings us closer to those we love.
Sometimes we try to believe a person has changed because we’re really just afraid of them (or of losing their safety net) and can’t admit it.
Your weight problems may be tied into your relationship issues, and your relationship issues may be tied into your weight problem. Fixing both requires help.
Learning it’s okay to ask for that help is sometimes half of the entire battle.
Depression is almost always tied to our relationships
For men, having no living legacy to leave behind or not fulfilling your mission in the world
For women, not feeling loved or feeling useless to the people you love
Then comes learned helplessness (“it’ll never get better”)
If you don’t believe you can get better, you’re right.
If you believe you can get better, you’re right.
Healing the mind and building a better life begins with the belief that a better life is possible. No one can help you until you accept the possibility.
Depression is a natural response to miserable conditions that are slowly killing you. No medication can change your circumstances, they can only numb you to the pain. And even that won’t be enough.
Meds can numb you enough to take action, but eventually you must TAKE ACTION.
If you don’t believe your awful circumstances can ever change, then of course you’re going to look for a way out no matter how terrible it may be. That’s why suicidal thoughts happen even to people who don’t want to commit suicide.
If you’re miserable enough to consider suicide, take a look at your other options and ask yourself if it would be worse to have uncomfortable confrontations or to die.
Your brain might be programmed to tell you that scary confrontations are the same as death, but they’re not.
One of the biggest ways the therapeutic relationship helps people is because the therapist gives a wounded person unconditional positive regard no matter what they admit.
For many, that’s the closest they’ve ever come to feeling loved. And they start to believe in acceptance.
“You have to love yourself before you can love others.”
Wrong. To love yourself you need to believe you are worth something. That comes from being loved first. Which is why giving love to others who haven’t earned it is so crucial.
Men with attachment issues have a hard time making and keeping male friends, because other men are scary. They’re loud and blunt and it’s easy to get nervous.
Most men with attachment issues stick to female friends because it’s easier to earn approval. Just like from mom.
Attachment issues are so pervasive in our culture that the obsessive craving to earn love takes many forms unique to each individual. If you don’t believe you can be loved for your value or achievements, you look for innate qualities that make you special enough to earn approval.
Sometimes lying happens on both sides, both with the mouth and with the ears.
Huge difference between a nice guy and a kind man.
A lot of ADHD/ADD is misdiagnosed anxiety from attachment problems starting in infancy. Very tough to separate that kind of anxiety
And true ADHD can lead to attachment issues if everyone in your family treats you like crap for having them. So then you have both ADHD and anxiety
I would never be friends with a man who cheats on his wife.
If he’ll do that to his closest partner who loves him and gives him absolute trust, what will he do to me?
Gurus grow up watching movies and playing video games and still become financially successful gurus but then tell you if you let your child enjoy even one minute of relaxation their life will be over.
Figure out how to live in moderation instead of always at the extremes.
It’s common in modern life to believe we ourselves are unworthy of even our own love.
A lot of redpill groups are based on luring in men who have attachment issues and comforting them by assuring them attachment issues are normal. They teach men how to find women with attachment issues and exploit those issues to get sex without ever healing or loving.
Don’t work harder than the person you’re helping. That’s enabling.
Some people want to be unhappy. Trying to change them will make you unhappy.
Consider your funeral. What 3 principles would you be ashamed for people to say you did NOT embody?
Place these 3 principles above comfort, fear, and pleasure. Prioritize them in all decision making.
Apologize and fix it when you fall short.
You will never hate yourself again.
Integrity does not mean never making mistakes or never being wrong.
It means taking full ownership of mistakes and pro-actively making amends for accidental wrongs without making excuses.
“One study in 68 healthy adults found that those who received the most sunlight exposure in the previous 30 days had the highest density of dopamine receptors in the reward and movement regions of their brains.”
Sunlight: Feel better, stay happier.
Death anniversaries can sneak up on you and hit harder than you expect. And a lot of us lost people in 2020 and 2019.
If you’ve got a death anniversary coming, make plans. Don’t shrug it off. It may hit worse than you expect.
Don’t face your anniversaries alone or in silence.
“When my kids turn 18 they are OUT, and I’m not giving them one cent more.”
You’ll save more money every Christmas when you don’t get to see your grandkids. Man shrugging
Generational responsibility is real.
When my friends lose someone I ask “What are you gonna do about it?” Feel your grief. Then let it drive you to do more than you did before.
That may mean having deeper conversations. Or hugging more often. Or emulating your loved one more fully.
Feel. Then act. Be their legacy.
Most porn relapses are really sugar crashes in disguise. Learn about the impact of sugar in the brain and how constant dopamine crashes could be fueling your struggle with other temptations besides sugar, including porn.
People can change. But it’s rare. And when they do, you KNOW. Everyone in their life is blown away by the overwhelming transformation backed up with full accountability, transparency, and consistent self-motivated improvement.
If you aren’t sure, then they haven’t really changed
Women aren’t the problem.
Men aren’t the problem.
Attachment is the problem.
Marry a spouse with healthy attachment, cultivate healthy attachment in yourself, and build a healthy attached marriage, and your divorce risk drops to nearly 0%.
Signed, a retired marriage therapist.
Millions of American men can’t even remember the last time they got a hug.
Most remember every compliment they’ve ever received because they live on ONE PER YEAR.
Compliment or hug a guy in your life. Your kindness may help him through a dark time.
You might save a life.
Just published the first video on my new Youtube channel: How to Beat Social Anxiety and Master Conversation.
Women with attachment issues find men with attachment issues. It works for a while. Then they have kids and she gets mad at him for having attachment issues because that causes anxiety for her kids. She demands he change. He has no idea how.
This is the majority of divorces.
It’s impossible for a Christian to have a healthy relationship with God if their attachment is broken.
They’ll struggle to accept divine love and forgiveness, will act to earn approval instead of building a relationship, and the pressure will drive them to sin in dopamine binges
Making friends in bars is a great way to make sure you’re only connected by going to bars and getting drunk.
Develop hobbies. Go to places where other people are doing those hobbies. Talk to the people there. When you like someone, ask them to be your friend.
It’s that easy.
You’re not unlovable. You just don’t believe you deserve love and commitment, and you pick partners who treat you the way you expect to be treated.
“I don’t understand why he broke up with me but married the next girl. What was wrong with me?”
You’re not unlovable. You didn’t offer what he was looking for. That can happen if he’s unhealthy or if you’re insecure and don’t share who you really are
You might be blocking love.
Women with broken attachment believe there is something wrong with them that makes them permanently unlovable. They believe everyone else can see it but not them, they don’t know what’s wrong. They just feel abandoned and unloved.
What would you do if you could never be loved?
When your attachment is broken and you believe you’re innately unloveable, you use any means necessary to earn approval. It’s living based on fear instead of principles.
And it’s not rational because the logical brain is diminished to fuel chronic anxiety in the emotional brain.
Many women in hookup culture believe they’re going to find a meaningful connection. They don’t realize they’re being used for masturbation.
What you do today determines who you are. Not yesterday, not last week, and not that embarrassing memory from your high school cringe phase.
Your choices today are who you are.
Make today count.
“All women are gold diggers!”
1) You’re broke and insecure about it.
2) You only chase gold diggers.
3) You treat people like objects and push buttons to get reactions.
The kind of man who would mock a woman for having daddy issues is the kind of man who doesn’t understand what she has lost by missing her father’s love.
If you
Feel empty
Have no connection to the people around you
Don’t know how get close to others
Wish someone would love you
Are afraid people will reject you if they learn who you really are
Can’t say no to even unreasonable requests
Are eager for approval
That’s attachment.
One of the greatest evils inflicted on modern men was the campaign to portray all physical affection between men as sexual in nature.
Men crave physical affection. We starve for it like we starve for sunlight. And we’re terrified to voice this need.
Radical redpill and radical feminism are two sides of the same coin. Both are built on encouraging wounded people not to recover from broken attachment. And both generate wealth for the charlatans at the top who peddle sickness in the form of comfort.
Attachment issues are so pervasive that we normalize them instead of challenging them. The current generation cannot conceive that healthy attachment might exist. So they hide.
“I love you but I’m not in love with you” is a recipe for five divorces.
Some of my friends are ugly. Some are handsome. Some are millionaires. Some are broke.
They all have honor. Otherwise they would not be my friend.
Do not compromise where it matters. Tolerance for dishonor is not a virtue. It’s a knife at your back.
Honor consists of living to your principles at all times no matter the personal cost and making unflinching amends when you fall short.
Attachment issues push you to surrender your principles out of fear of abandonment.
This is why men with attachment issues hate themselves.
If it is dishonorable, don’t do it. Even if it’s legal. If legal punishment is your measure of right and wrong then you are at the moral level of an animal.
The number one question I get after people read this thread is: What is attachment?
So I released a video that explains the exact definition. Enjoy.
If your wife is propping up your entire reality, she’s not your wife. She’s your mother.
How to make friends as an adult
1) Get a hobby that people do in social settings
2) Go where people are doing it and do it with those people
3) Talk to people there about the hobby until you find a cool person
4) Ask “Want to be friends?”
5) Now you have a friend
It’s that easy
Young women when they’re single: “I am a fierce tiger made of unicorns, no man can tame me.”
Young women in a relationship: “I’m so worthless. Nobody loves me. Please don’t leave me.”
If this is you, this is a sign of broken attachment.
Husbands: You fix your relationship with your wife by fixing your relationships with your kids first.
If your kids are miserable in their relationships with you, she blames you. You’re a threat to her children.
Fix that. Then she sees them happy, and she respects you for it.
Step one isn’t to figure out the solution. It’s to shut down your emotional right brain and restore energy to your logical left brain so you can process the situation in a calm way.
“Never apologize to your child!”
You want to teach them that adults sweep everything under the rug and pretend it never happened? To never take ownership of a mistake? That authority requires no respect from the governed?
Good luck being allowed to see your grandchildren.
The core of persuasion is offering value to achieve mutual fulfillment.
The core of manipulation is demanding value to fulfill yourself.
The lesson: If you want to attain good things, whether love or trust or loyalty, you must offer value. If you demand, you are manipulating.
Childhood is brief. The tantrums come from an underdeveloped brain and are not personal. But your every word spoken and the time you invest in your child shapes their understanding of love.
We are fortunate if they love us this much as adults when they have the choice.
They spend 12 years chasing us. We spend 70 years chasing them.
Make your children easy for you to catch. Don’t be left behind.
Inheritance is NORMAL. Starting over at zero every single time is absolute insanity and constitutes deep neglect and contempt for one’s own descendants.
Kicking your kids out penniless at 18 so a family of 5 pays 4 rents, 4 utilities, and goes into debt to survive is stupidity.
A girl translates her father’s behavior toward her into expectations for what she’s worth. His parental love prepares her to accept male love. Take your daughter on many practice dates so she knows what’s normal before you send her out into a world of fools and predators.
The same people who say it’s “creepy” to have daddy-daughter dates also think sex on a first date is normal.
Their father failed them. In every way.
Socrates said “If you want to get to Mount Olympus, make sure every step you take is in that direction.”
The same is true of every principle in your life. If you want to be honorable, loving, wealthy, or grow a powerful family, make sure every step you take is in that direction.
When a father is good, he teaches his son to do good. When a father is bad, he teaches his son to do bad. To become good, his son must unlearn the bad and then learn the good before he can do that good.
This triples the son’s work and puts him years or decades behind.
Divorce is not normal.
The smartest way to beat your unwanted reactions is to lower your overall stress level.
If you’re constantly at 7 out of 10, you’ve got no breathing room before you react. You’ll shoot from the hip. That’s especially bad when you’re shooting at someone you care about.
Anxious parents make anxious kids.
If every parent took their duty as a parent to be the most sacred responsibility in their life, we could have a thriving culture in two generations.
Your life does not need to be easier. It needs to be simpler.
The Neolithic Revolution was about 11,700 years ago and our Hunter-Gatherer brains are barely catching up to those changes.
Imagine thinking it’s normal for a child to have chronic anxiety symptoms.
Then you diagnose them with ADHD and medicate them with stimulants when they can’t pay attention.
At age 7.
Food is medicine. It can make you sick or make you healthy.
You wouldn’t use medicine without understanding where it came from, how much to use, and what it’s supposed to do, right?
Picture all those county songs, and old movies, and ancient poems in our oldest literature that talk about how good it feels to go home.
Now imagine they’re talking about a rented one-bedroom apartment.
Humans are built for family settlements. But we’ve become nomadic loners.
People are so afraid to invest 2 years in their dream and risk being disappointed that they procrastinate for 10 years, miss their shot, and spend their last 50 years regretting missing out.
“You have to love yourself first” is crap. If you believe you’re unlovable, you can’t magically love yourself. People need to experience love before they believe they’re worth anything.
Healing starts with love. Give love where it’s needed. Go be someone’s reason for believing.
If your parents didn’t teach you a skill, but your child needs that skill from you, it is your job as a parent to learn that skill.
Most new fathers don’t feel close to their newborn. They see the mother bonding with the baby and try to do it too, but it doesn’t work the same. So they feel like a bad father.
There’s nothing wrong with you. Men bond differently.
A man who loves his child learns to protect his child.
If you’re depressed and medication isn’t helping, you need a better answer to deal with your depression.
Men and women both struggle with depression. And they tend to have different causes. But what factor do they share?
In short, we aren’t meant to live the way we’re living. Our lifestyle is causing the majority of all depression. And you won’t heal until you fix it.
If the world makes you feel powerless, you’re thinking on the wrong scale.
You can’t control what a nation will do. But you CAN impact your local environment. People who need help. Kids in your life who need love.
1M people thinking local changes a nation. So think local.
According to the CDC, 19% of women experienced anxiety symptoms in the last 2 weeks. Other studies show 15% of women are anxious every single day.
This isn’t normal.
You don’t know who you are because you haven’t defined yourself. We are made by our choices, and if you’ve let those choices be made by fear, your true self is still waiting.
Live true to yourself. Be you.
Sometimes fighting over toothpaste is about the toothpaste. Sometimes the fight is about something much deeper.
We’ve all heard the US divorce rate is 50%. This number is hammered into us over and over until we’re afraid to get married. Why even try is it’s just a coin toss?
It’s NOT just a coin toss. That 50% stat is a lie.
“My friends don’t really like me. They’re just being nice.”
“No one would love me if they knew the real me.”
“I feel so alone. Even when I’m with people. ESPECIALLY when I’m with people.”
You don’t have to live with this pain. Fix your attachment.
Our society treats boys like defective girls. The education and medical institutions tell 10yo boys they’re automatically bad if they aren’t medicated. So they get slapped with an ADHD diagnosis and medicated into zombies.
Transparency breeds trust. Healthy people do not resent requests for transparency. They know transparency will deepen your relationship.
Looking strong makes people respect you. You can fight this, but it’s an uphill battle. Better to optimize your body to the best version you can.
You don’t have to be perfect, you need to be the best you.
Some parents post about how annoying their kids are. Especially parents who get weekly visits. As if the kids won’t grow up and see that someday.
Their kids will post the same complaints when it’s time for the yearly nursing home visit.
You get what you give.
Reminder that “your kids should leave home at 18” is a psyop by the central banks to make 10 ext. family members pay 10 rents/mortgages, 10 sets of utilities, 10 car payments, and 10 of every item needed for a home, plus entertainment and stress relief to cope with being alone.
We get so caught up in work and chores and checklists that we lose sight of what matters. When we remember, we’re too exhausted. Our priorities fall apart, and we start to feel like life is just too much.
Your life does not need to be easier. It needs to be simpler.
Some people are so determined to remain emotional slaves that they get angry when you point out how they can save themselves.
“How do I fix broken attachment?”
—Three steps—
-Education: Learn what attachment is and why it matters.
-Connection: Open up to 3 people you trust.
-Systematic desensitization: Test the bonds many times so your brain learns you’re not unlovable.
US parents when you’re 18-20: “It’s time for you to be alone. I won’t help you. Nobody helped me, and look how good I turned out. Now get out and don’t come back.”
US parents when you’re 50: “Ok I blew your inheritance but I’m old and need help, you got me right?”
Not healthy.
“Why doesn’t my wife trust me yet?”
This is the #1 question I heard when I helped men fix their attachment. What they were really asking was, “How long is this gonna take?”
But what their wife heard was, “How long do I have to pretend I’ve changed?”
When you make a change, you want everyone to believe you. To feel supported and embraced and encouraged.
But when you’ve maintained the same damaging behaviors for ten years and every 6 months tell your spouse you’ve changed, they run out of belief.
Both sides get frustrated.
Women say men aren’t loyal. But men will go to the same restaurant for 20 years and order the same dish every time and be sad when it changes.
Needing to be right will keep you friendless and stupid.
Live your principles and you’ll have no regrets.
How do you find your principles? Imagine your funeral. What characteristics do you want people to say you you acted with? Courage? Compassion? Justice?
Those are your principles. Use them to make decisions.
No more regrets.
Many married women have never experienced an orgasm. More struggle to achieve even one. Some have given up and make sex all about their husband.
If you’re feeling stuck like this, here’s 5 ways to fix it without toys, lingerie, or porn.
In my years as a marriage counselor, I learned to say one thing up front:
“I’m not here to convince either of you to work on your marriage. I can give you solutions to reach shared goals. If one of you isn’t willing to do the work, I can’t help you.”
If you want to succeed, you’ve got to get over the people who call themselves your friend but who undercut your attempts to get better. Who criticize you for working hard, insult you for showing your expertise, and complain about you pursuing your goal. They are not your friend.
If you cheat on your spouse, and you’ve got children together, you’ve also cheated on your kids.
Your spouse can recover, but you just destroyed your kids’ family. You betrayed their need for stability and trust. They’ve got a right to be angry.
“You think everything in the world is about attachment.”
I think our society is so perfectly structured to destroy attachment that solving it becomes the first step in most personal and social problems.
Let’s get everyone’s attachment fixed and then discuss the next steps.
Toxic masculinity gets blamed for everything. Domestic violence. School shootings. The crops not growing in. And ice on windshields.
Toxic masculinity is fake. Anyone who knows authentically masculine men can see why.
High sugar and caffeine intake, chronic poor sleep, and depleted selenium in our soil and foods are shown to cause constant decreased serotonin and may be a major factor in the American depression epidemic.
It’s always depression season. Check on your loved ones.
Most dating experts teach you to embrace your attachment problems and leverage them in others.
My kids are realizing that family takes work, so they want reassurance that family stays together.
Imagine if tomorrow I divorced their mom and said, “SOMETIMES PEOPLE JUST STOP LOVING EACH OTHER.”
Our society pretends this is normal.
Reckless divorce is child abuse.
Unhappiness comes from believing you cannot make progress toward your goal.
If you crave to achieve financial security, run your dream business, have a loving family, be close to your spouse, or have the perfect body, and you believe progress is impossible, you’ll be unhappy.
If you want a better than normal day today, you must do some aspect of it better than normal. Rise to your own challenge and give yourself a better day.
Your brain tells you many things that are not true. This includes dictating what you should be afraid of. Fears are often misplaced associations. You can often overcome them by showing your brain it’s wrong. But your brain will fight you the whole way.
Today, love someone. Especially someone who doesn’t deserve it. The world gets better when we extend a hand to people who need it most. You don’t have to agree with them, or even like their choices, and they may reject your help. But your friendship and care is their best chance.
If you work harder on your job than you do on yourself, you’ll be left with a great job and a dead heart.
Men’s bonding is built on some rough teasing. It’s normal to test strength and challenge each other.
That’s one reason dudes with attachment issues have a hard time. It feels mean to do it and also it hurts when other men do it. So they avoid male bonding and confuse other men.
Realizing what you’re doing is the wrong way is a huge step because it ruins that behavior for you forever.
If you seek approval from others but learn there’s a better way to live and how approval seeking stops you from being happy, seeking approval becomes disgusting to you.
They don’t call them homewreckers anymore because couples aren’t getting married or making homes. They get a dog and pretend it’s a baby for 5 years until one of them gets tired of playing house and leaves for another relationship.
Having a dog baby together is playing house.
Fighting over dog custody is playing divorce.
As you parent, you will say and do things your parents said and did. Some of them will surprise you because you understand why they worked. Some will horrify you because you hated it so much that it drove a wedge between you and your parents.
Be careful which ones you pass on.
Some ADHD diagnoses are real. It’s a different neurology.
Most ADHD cases are normal boys loaded with sugar for breakfast and dealing with attachment issues from broken families and broken parenting.
The second group needs real help. Not drugs.
If you feed your kids heavy sugar breakfasts and then dose them up with ADHD meds because the teachers say they can’t sit still at school,
You’re parenting wrong.
Adam Lane Smith is a two-time #1 Amazon bestselling novelist and a licensed psychotherapist specializing in trauma and attachment with experience in both clinical and correctional mental health settings. That includes his work in the California justice system where he treated inmates facing the death penalty.