Humans have a deep need to be loved. Manipulators are experts at exploiting others’ needs for selfish gain. That’s why love bombing even occurs. It’s a manipulative technique where the manipulator bombards you with attention and affection. The goal is not to build a healthy relationship but to gain power and control over you. Like …
Anhedonia is a reduced ability or inability to derive pleasure from activities from which you previously derived pleasure. It has two main types: 1. Physical anhedonia It’s the inability to derive pleasure from stimulating one or more of the five senses. For example, you may no longer find foods pleasurable that you previously found pleasurable. …
The terms ‘enmeshment’ and ‘codependency’ are often used together and sometimes interchangeably. That’s because the two concepts are closely related. Even though enmeshment and codependency are overlapping concepts, they have subtle but important differences. Enmeshment Enmeshment occurs when two or more people in a relationship setting, like a family, have a single, unified identity, which …
Thoughts can be conscious (voluntary) or subconscious (involuntary). If I ask you to solve a math problem, you’ll use your reasoning or conscious thought. The same is true for goal-setting, planning, and decision-making. All these require conscious thought. Conscious thoughts that arise from the conscious mind are a recent evolutionary phenomenon. The conscious mind is …
Have you ever wondered why the same situation affects different people differently? For instance, you may be able to handle rejection well, but your friend may get depressed and lose sleep over it. While humans have many genetically programmed universal behaviors, it’s not just our genes that program us. The environment in which we’re raised …
Emotion is one of the most complex, highly-debated topics in psychology. Even after decades of research, there still isn’t a consensus on what constitutes an emotion. You can’t define what you can’t clearly understand. As a result, there’s no universal definition of emotion.1 Still, a definition we can work with would be: Emotions are signals …
The purpose of emotions is to motivate us to take action. Therefore, you can use emotions if you want to make someone do something. Nothing drives human action like emotion. Emotional manipulation means using emotions to make someone do something that is not in their best interests but in the best interests of the manipulator. …
Aggression is any behavior intended to harm others. The harm can be physical or psychological. Here, the key word is ‘intended’ because unintended harm is not aggression. For instance, accidental harm like hitting someone with your car is not aggression. Punching someone definitely is. It gets blurry and controversial when we talk about the different …
The famous psychologist Erik Erikson came up with the stages of psychosocial development. The gist of his theory is that as we progress through life, from the day we’re born to the day we die, we go through some developmental stages. There’s a challenge to overcome in each of these stages, a conflict to resolve. …
Relationships are complicated. If you think quantum mechanics is complex, wait till you get into a relationship. When two minds collide and enter into a relationship, all sorts of chain reactions get triggered. It’s not just two minds colliding; it’s a collision of intentions, perceptions, misperceptions, assumptions, interpretations, misinterpretations, and behaviors. A mishmash of these …