Christopher Panks

Christopher Panks is an ex-journo, teacher, MSc Psych grad based in Edinburgh. Working to maintain and improve student well-being. My views, not employer's.

[Christopher Panks @CPanksPsych]

How easily we can cheapen the tangible achievements of others, by bestowing ourselves with the same garlands in an imagined, hypothetical future.

[Alastair Humphreys @Al_Humphreys]

Same principle applies to cycling across continents / writing books etc. etc.
(h/t @polarben)

[Dr. Linda Berman @LindaBerman4]

“The opposite of depression is expression. What comes out of your body will never make you ill. What stays in there will.”

Edith Eger

[Carl Jung Archive @QuoteJung]

“All addictions are a low level search for God.”

- Carl Jung

[Carl Hindy, Ph.D. @DrCarlHindy]

My personal truths as a clinical psychologist, for today (July 11, 2026):

Chronic defensiveness predicts loneliness.

If every disagreement feels like an attack, every suggestion feels like criticism, and every hurt has to be explained away or blamed on someone else, people eventually stop trying to get close.

Defensiveness protects us from uncomfortable feelings in the moment, but it also blocks the honesty and vulnerability that relationships need to grow.

You see it in marriages where every concern turns into an argument. In friendships where no one can give honest feedback anymore. At work when someone always has an excuse. Even in politics, where admitting a small mistake can feel more threatening than doubling down on a bad position.

The people who stay closest to us aren’t the ones who never make mistakes. They’re the ones who can say, “You’re right. I missed that.”

The less we need to defend ourselves, the safer other people feel around us. And that’s where closeness begins.

Defensiveness may protect your pride, but humility protects your relationships.

[Christopher Panks @CPanksPsych]

@Theholisticpsyc worth, I think deliniating a little between a person with a narcissistically organised personality (as Nancy McWilliams puts it), and those with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (usually not encountered outside of institutions and prisons). Which is why 'a narcissist' troublesme

[Christopher Panks @CPanksPsych]

@Theholisticpsyc Dear Dr Nicole, I do believe that you did an excellent job describing some of the inner world of 'a narcissist'. However, I think it's really important to recognise that narcissism exists in us all, and we're all prone to fits of it, given the right circumstances. It's also ...

[BrightonPsych @BrightonPsych]

The modern self is encouraged to optimise everything except the one thing that matters most: the capacity to bear reality.

[Christopher Panks @CPanksPsych]

@sober_empath Keep going and protect your own sobriety over all else. Remember, we carry the message not the drunk. Take care of yourself.

[Dr. Emily Anhalt @dremilyanhalt]

“YEAH SO AI THERAPY IS SO ALLURING BECAUSE IT COLLUDES WITH THE VERY DEFENSES THAT YOU’RE TRYING TO DISMANTLE! MOST OF OUR PROBLEMS ARE ULTIMATELY RELATIONSHIP PROBLEMS AND WITHOUT A REAL RELATIONSHIP WITH ANOTHER HUMAN BEING YOU’RE LIKELY TO REINFORCE DEEPLY ENGRAINED PATTERNS THAT ARE NO LONGER SERVING YOU!”

[Dr. Linda Berman @LindaBerman4]

Group psychotherapy provides patients an opportunity to learn how they function in groups—the roles they play, the expectations and unconscious fantasies they harbor about groups, and the obstacles they encounter in getting along with others at work and at home.
Glen O. Gabbard

[Amy Coyle 🫐 @mortalamycoil]

“People often prefer orgies of self-punishment to acknowledging wrongdoing, bearing depressive guilt or concern, and forgoing both narcissism and masochism in favour of contrition and conscience, reparative activity.”
~ Donald Carveth

[Christopher Panks @CPanksPsych]

@DoctorPerin Humanist? Humastentialist?

[Frannyfanny @proud_penelope]

Great thread

[Christopher Panks @CPanksPsych]

@street_trashed In my experience it is never about the alcohol. It likely started long before that, with deep emotional, developmental and spiritual wounds, which leads to the conclusion 'I'm unhappy. I want to be happy.' These are the causes and conditions, alcohol was our best try at solving

[Christopher Panks @CPanksPsych]

@sbuehler I find this very interesting. Have been obsessing for a month or so about my avoidance of direct human experience. But with the compassion to know that at my current stage of treatment, a level of indirectness is vital. That's the growing edge.

[Christopher Panks @CPanksPsych]

@proud_penelope I really believe a more fruitful discussion of the limits of 'ethical core conditions' of counselling, is not how to be of most service to the already marginalised, but can we work with people we disagree with. How do we manage that c-transference/ without harming the patient.

[Christopher Panks @CPanksPsych]

@proud_penelope Timely, was in my group analysis experiential group thinking about this at the weekend. Position, privilege, power etc. So much for the unconscious to split and project onto. As clinicians we better grapple with these internal, unconscious biases.

[The Mel Jar @the_mel_jar]

“I do not have any erotic feelings towards my analyst because I see them as my mother and/or father instead.”

Um.

Guys…

Should we share The Secret Knowledge, or is this perhaps too advanced?

Once you’ve actually felt all the various transferences, then we’re in analysis! 🧵

[Christopher Panks @CPanksPsych]

@SteveStuWill Today in we do not and cannot know the content of minds and hearts #5764351

In rehab we say, watch the legs, not the lips.

[Natural Philosophy @Naturalphilosy]

“Travel was once a means of being elsewhere, or of being nowhere. Today it is the only way we have of feeling that we are somewhere. At home, surrounded by screens, I am no longer anywhere, but rather everywhere in the world at once... To arrive in a new city is suddenly to find oneself here and nowhere else. The body rediscovers how to look. Delivered from images, it rediscovers the imagination.”

— Jean Baudrillard