This is free advice from an expensive psychologist. If you’re an anxious person, do everything for fun. Go to a job interview for fun. Submit documents for fun. Start a blog for fun. Anxiety feeds on importance. Don’t make everything a matter of life and death.
at what age did you guys realize every crush you had was just admiration for someone brave enough to openly embody all the traits you kept hidden out of fear of judgment
Game theory explains why working harder inside a broken system is the worst response to that system. Because a system is never truly broken. It's just producing exactly the outcomes its own incentive structures were designed to produce, whether intentional or not. Working harder inside this system increases your output in the payoff matrix, but it simply won't change the actual structure of the system's matrix. Thus, the correct response is not more effort. Instead, you must aim to identify whose interests the current structure serves and position yourself in favor of those interests rather than against them. Change the game, or play the game that is actually being played. Either way, you must stop optimizing for the game you wish it to be and start acting realistically.
The world is getting worse and i don't think it's going to stop. and the honest truth is, most people who tell you to fight back are also losing. the only person i've ever watched actually keep their mind through something terrible was a quiet woman who never talked about strength once. she just did normal things with frightening consistency. she waked up early, she made food, she cleaned her place, she talked to people like they mattered, even when she knew how bad it was. maybe especially because she knew how bad it was. and it shamed me, because i was out there talking about the darkness, thinking that made me useful. and she was just quietly not letting it into her kitchen
Game theory proves how "grinding" harder in a rigged game won't fix it. It has adverse effects. It deepens the system. Systems are never truly broken. They're working as designed: always serving someone's interests. You must figure out who truly benefits and adapt accordingly. You either remain trapped in their game or change it to your benefit.
“The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory, is that conspiracy theorists believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is actually chaotic. The truth is that it is not The Iluminati, or The Jewish Banking Conspiracy, or the Gray Alien Theory.
The truth is far more frightening - Nobody is in control.
The world is rudderless.”
—Alan Moore
If you spend enough time in environments where dark triad and cluster B behavior is normalized, you begin to mistake manipulation for sophistication.
You assume everyone is running social games at all times because that is the only reality you have experienced.
Yet the minute you encounter genuinely high-functioning people you realize they are not performing. They are not constantly destabilizing, humiliating, or competing for psychic dominance.
They simply build, create, host, work, and move through life without feeding on others. Once you see the difference, you recognize love without demonic possession.