People who manipulate others feed on the drama they get when they can generate a strong emotion in others. If they can no longer get the response they seek, they often lose interest and move on. So when you are with someone whose actions toward you can set you off, become a grey rock. Imagine you are just there, boring, dull, gray. Be the most uninteresting person you can be. Grey rocking is a technique for interacting with manipulative and abusive people. This can include people with narcissistic personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, and toxic people without a mental health diagnosis. This article will tell you more about the grey rock method.

In the process of growing up, you learn the rules of society. You realize that specific behavior is more rewarding than other behavior. You learn that by pretending and behaving in a certain way, people will look at you in another way. Thereby you lose authenticity. Is this a good way to go?

There are not many colors that have a name attached to them. Baker-Miller-Pink is one of the few (the only other one I can think of is International Klein Blue, but here will be more). This is the story about Baker-Miller-Pink, why jails were painted pink, and the effects of this color on people’s psyche.

According to Freud, we instinctively search for pleasure to satisfy our biological and psychological needs. The id, our unconscious psychic energy, thrives on pleasure and is linked to libido. Freud described the pleasure principle as the program of what decides the purpose of life. This driving force is not in touch with reality, logic, or social norms.

Nowadays, being happy seems one of life´s big quests. Goodreads quotes give an astounding 15,238 hits for quotes about happiness. And people try hard to do whatever makes them happy, even if they don´t really know what makes them happy. Social media is also a big promotor of the happy life, and people love to show off how happy they are. However, if we look at real life, we see that it is not easy for people to be happy, not to mention that seeing happy friends on social media while you are not happy can make you even less happy. Is the goal to be happy a realistic one, and how can we use our knowledge about our brain and the basic emotions to find answers to this question?

In the late 60´s Calhoun performed an experiment in which four pairs of mice were kept in a nine-square-foot enclosure. The mice lived in a plague-free environment, with an abundance of comforts, a lack of predation, and an unlimited supply of consumables. This population grew to 2200, they created social order, but they also ceased to mate. Within two years, the entire society went extinct. He performed this research to test his hypothesis: overpopulation spawns a breakdown in social functions, and that, in turn, inevitably leads to extinction.

People with a low ability at a task will overestimate their ability; this is called the Dunning-Kruger effect. (Kruger & Dunning, 1999) For example, ask at a birthday party, people if they can drive better than the average person, and you will find that most people will say yes, which is impossible because most people will drive like average people. Dunning and Kruger found that people who perform in the lowest quarter percentile on humor, grammar, and logic tests grossly overestimate their performance and ability.

Cognitive dissonance occurs when people hold contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values and are typically experienced as psychological stress when people participate in an action against one or more of them. According to this theory, when two actions or ideas are not psychologically consistent with each other, people will do all in their power to change them until they become consistent.

Do you start crying because you feel sad, or do your eyes produce tears, and therefore you feel sad? Do emotions cloud our thinking? The general opinion is that we start to cry because we are sad and that emotions cloud our thinking. This may be partially true, but science shows us that things might be more complex and that we cannot make the right decisions without using our emotions.

Victim playing (or playing the victim, victim card, or self-victimization) is the fabrication or exaggeration of victimhood for various reasons. In this article, I want to discuss playing the victim to manipulate others and to diffuse responsibility. And how playing the victim will make you a victim.

Memento mori, what a way to start a story. The meaning of memento mori is remember that you must die. What’s the point of life if you don’t think about death? What distinguishes us from animals is our consciousness. This is a great good, but it also comes with the burden of knowing about death. To make it even worse, it is the only certainty in life; we will die. In most religions and cultures, death plays a specific role, but there are differences in how death is integrated into our lives.

Pathocracy is a government run by psychopaths. Victims of these psychopaths are easy to recognize nowadays; they wear a mouth mask, which quite literally shuts up their mouth. People in the West often think that the government is acting in the interest of their citizens, but currently, that is definitely not the case.

Brainwashing, isn´t that old skool tactics used a long time ago? Well, maybe not… `May you live in interesting times` is a Chinese curse. To be exact, `Better to be a dog in times of tranquility than a human in times of chaos.´ (寧為太平犬，不做亂世人). I guess not many would disagree that we are living in very interesting times now. How do you keep your sanity and balance of mind if everything around you is trying to push you out of balance? One of the things you can do is to try to see through things and recognize patterns and tricks used on you. In this story, I will talk about brainwashing. I hope it will make you curious and you will learn something from it.

Every lie is a sin; honesty and telling the truth is always best, isn´t it? Could it be that there are times when not telling the truth is a good thing, and good things come from lying?

Not happiness, but curiosity gives us gratification and satisfaction in life! If things are getting too predictable, we get bored. If we stay curious, we can discover something else or something new that positively affects your life and emotions.

Having depression is not the same as feeling depressed. We all feel depressed at times, which is an entirely normal feeling and is part of life. Having depression is an abnormal form. Depression is a catastrophe.

Stock trading is all about psychology and dealing with emotions. To be successful as a trader, you should be aware of these emotions because they influence your decisions, and if you are not aware of these emotions, they can lead to impaired judgment and decision making. Because these emotions are universal, there are lessons to be learned for us all.

Nowadays, it feels like compromise is less accepted. The polarization seems more extreme, and people hold intractable positions. They think their ideas are superior, and therefore they are unwilling to listen, let alone change their position. To change their beliefs or views is a sign of weakness or a sign that you are not convinced enough.

Why do we do things, even when we know it is not right, and why do we click on headlines from which we already know (or should be able to know) that they are click-bait?

The business model of mainstream media (MSM) is sick. Profit is made by making us feel bad, and it is not making our society better.

In the polarized world these days, more than ever, we need empathy and compassion. Empathy and compassion are an essential part of being human; it is the basis of our morality. It is one of the traits which puts us aside from animals. It makes us civilized people instead of savages. Empathy and compassion are so important; we even make a hormone for it, oxytocin. Compassion is part of humanity and is a necessity.