Dr. Connor McClenahan

Clinical Psychologist with a bias toward the beauty of interpersonal neurobiology

[Dr. Connor McClenahan @drmcclenahan]

Social media is anti-therapy.

- Extremist one-sided opinions
- Appeals to reactivity
- Appeals to fear response
- Isolates you from contrary evidence / perspectives
- Isolates you from real in-person interactions

Removing it from my phone last year made me feel like I could breathe again. Try it - delete the app from your phone for a week and see how your mind opens up again.

[Dr. Connor McClenahan @drmcclenahan]

the myopic focus on “naming emotions” comes from
1. Perverse incentives not based on student functional outcomes
2. Victim/oppressor worldview perpetuated by therapists
3. Therapist avoidance of fostering responsibility

Balancing feminine (empathy) and masculine (agency) is often lost. Agency = blame.

[Dr. Connor McClenahan @drmcclenahan]

@ClareMorellEPPC Reframe: "People on their phones don't get free ice cream." haha

[Dr. Connor McClenahan @drmcclenahan]

@hubermanlab It's probably the least fun thing to reduce "fun" down to its neurological mechanisms.

[Dr. Connor McClenahan @drmcclenahan]

The anxiety is a signal worth listening to. As bad as it feels, it's not there to hurt you. Sounds like you kind of know what it's about: not feeling "enough", despite an observing ego that says "you SHOULD feel enough, cut it out." Listening to the anxiety with curiosity, openness, and maybe a therapist, will lead you toward greater awareness and love for yourself. Invite the anxiety as you would a child, don't be at war with it. It's likely a very young part of you... :) best of luck

[Dr. Connor McClenahan @drmcclenahan]

@thatsKAIZEN Sociopathic medium of communication

[Dr. Connor McClenahan @drmcclenahan]

@WayneTurton @ThePosieParker @elonmusk knows this, he’s trying to benefit from the politicization of Charlie’s death. We’re still all Americans

[Dr. Connor McClenahan @drmcclenahan]

Or maybe power doesn’t always = top-down control. Riffing on your “she” pronoun for God, power can look maternal, nurturing generous propensity for humans to develop their paths toward the divine without constraint. A gardener is powerful, as is a mother who doesn’t control her child’s destiny “In Him (or Her!) we live and move and have our being”.

Maybe when you say God isn’t all powerful, you’re rightly critiquing an anthropomorphic idea of power.

[Dr. Connor McClenahan @drmcclenahan]

A better ethic for self-care is "allowing myself to be cared for by others". And a better ethic for helping others is "caring for others as I'm cared for"

[Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel]

Self-care is overrated—helping others has the biggest benefits for everyone involved.

[Dr. Connor McClenahan @drmcclenahan]

@Philip_Goff @simonjjacobson Doctrine supersedes biblical texts - in fact, the biblical texts were chosen based on the rule of faith, not the other way around. It might be more fruitful to research how the doctrine of the Holy Spirit came about aside from the biblical texts themselves.

[Jonathan Haidt @JonHaidt]

Testimonials are coming in from teachers about their newly phone-free schools, and the amazing things that students are now doing. Like taking notes, completing their assignments, then talking to each other.

"Was it this easy of a solution the whole time?"

[mitsuri @0xmitsurii]

Naval Ravikant: The only true test of intelligence, is if you get what you want out of life.

[Dr. Connor McClenahan @drmcclenahan]

Empathy pierces our illusion of separateness

[Dr. Connor McClenahan @drmcclenahan]

@Philip_Goff @JohnCleese Ni?

[Dr. Connor McClenahan @drmcclenahan]

@StevenQuartz Agreed. Empirically true. 🌯 🚲

[Dr. Connor McClenahan @drmcclenahan]

If you’re critical of yourself, as much as you’d hate to admit it, you might still be attached to the voice of your critical parent.

[Dr. Connor McClenahan @drmcclenahan]

You have no idea where you’ll steer the ship once you start paying attention to your life. This scares most people, so they never pay attention.

[Dr. Connor McClenahan @drmcclenahan]

The therapy “tools” you think you’ll receive are VASTLY DIFFERENT from the tools you’ll end up receiving.

People come in wanting to “control” their anxiety, and come out with a new relationship they thought impossible. They come in wanting “communication skills” and come out with new ways to be affectionate.

If therapy works well, you’ll have no idea where you’ll steer the ship once you start paying attention to your life.

[Dr. Connor McClenahan @drmcclenahan]

AI will force therapists to reject manualized treatments and create experience-driven, radically human approaches, or fail.

AI + video therapy => manualized therapists will be replaced by AI.

Non-personal, non-present therapists will become obsolete.

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

Yes.

Writing is not a second thing that happens after thinking. The act of writing is an act of thinking. Writing *is* thinking.

Students, academics, and anyone else who outsources their writing to LLMs will find their screens full of words and their minds emptied of thought.