Thread by @AdamLaneSmith

Alright let's do this

1 retweet = 1 harsh Psychology truth

Integrity does not mean never making mistakes or never being wrong.

It means taking full ownership of mistakes and pro-actively making amends for accidental wrongs without making excuses.

“One study in 68 healthy adults found that those who received the most sunlight exposure in the previous 30 days had the highest density of dopamine receptors in the reward and movement regions of their brains.”

Sunlight: Feel better, stay happier. healthline.com/nutrition/how-…

Death anniversaries can sneak up on you and hit harder than you expect. And a lot of us lost people in 2020 and 2019.

If you’ve got a death anniversary coming, make plans. Don’t shrug it off. It may hit worse than you expect.

Don’t face your anniversaries alone or in silence.

“When my kids turn 18 they are OUT, and I’m not giving them one cent more.”

You’ll save more money every Christmas when you don’t get to see your grandkids. Man shrugging

Generational responsibility is real.

When my friends lose someone I ask “What are you gonna do about it?” Feel your grief. Then let it drive you to do more than you did before.

That may mean having deeper conversations. Or hugging more often. Or emulating your loved one more fully.

Feel. Then act. Be their legacy.

Most porn relapses are really sugar crashes in disguise. Learn about the impact of sugar in the brain and how constant dopamine crashes could be fueling your struggle with other temptations besides sugar, including porn.

People can change. But it’s rare. And when they do, you KNOW. Everyone in their life is blown away by the overwhelming transformation backed up with full accountability, transparency, and consistent self-motivated improvement.

If you aren’t sure, then they haven’t really changed

Women aren’t the problem.
Men aren’t the problem.
Attachment is the problem.

Marry a spouse with healthy attachment, cultivate healthy attachment in yourself, and build a healthy attached marriage, and your divorce risk drops to nearly 0%.

Signed, a retired marriage therapist.

Millions of American men can’t even remember the last time they got a hug.

Most remember every compliment they’ve ever received because they live on ONE PER YEAR.

Compliment or hug a guy in your life. Your kindness may help him through a dark time.

You might save a life.

Just published the first video on my new Youtube channel: How to Beat Social Anxiety and Master Conversation.

Women with attachment issues find men with attachment issues. It works for a while. Then they have kids and she gets mad at him for having attachment issues because that causes anxiety for her kids. She demands he change. He has no idea how.

This is the majority of divorces.

It's impossible for a Christian to have a healthy relationship with God if their attachment is broken.

They'll struggle to accept divine love and forgiveness, will act to earn approval instead of building a relationship, and the pressure will drive them to sin in dopamine binges

Making friends in bars is a great way to make sure you're only connected by going to bars and getting drunk.

Develop hobbies. Go to places where other people are doing those hobbies. Talk to the people there. When you like someone, ask them to be your friend.

It's that easy.

You're not unlovable. You just don't believe you deserve love and commitment, and you pick partners who treat you the way you expect to be treated.

"I don't understand why he broke up with me but married the next girl. What was wrong with me?"

You're not unlovable. You didn't offer what he was looking for. That can happen if he's unhealthy or if you're insecure and don't share who you really are

You might be blocking love.

Women with broken attachment believe there is something wrong with them that makes them permanently unlovable. They believe everyone else can see it but not them, they don’t know what’s wrong. They just feel abandoned and unloved.

What would you do if you could never be loved?

When your attachment is broken and you believe you’re innately unloveable, you use any means necessary to earn approval. It’s living based on fear instead of principles.

And it’s not rational because the logical brain is diminished to fuel chronic anxiety in the emotional brain.

Many women in hookup culture believe they’re going to find a meaningful connection. They don’t realize they’re being used for masturbation.

What you do today determines who you are. Not yesterday, not last week, and not that embarrassing memory from your high school cringe phase.

Your choices today are who you are.

Make today count.

“All women are gold diggers!”

1) You’re broke and insecure about it.
2) You only chase gold diggers.
3) You treat people like objects and push buttons to get reactions.

The kind of man who would mock a woman for having daddy issues is the kind of man who doesn’t understand what she has lost by missing her father’s love.

If you

Feel empty
Have no connection to the people around you
Don't know how get close to others
Wish someone would love you
Are afraid people will reject you if they learn who you really are
Can't say no to even unreasonable requests
Are eager for approval

That's attachment.

One of the greatest evils inflicted on modern men was the campaign to portray all physical affection between men as sexual in nature.

Men crave physical affection. We starve for it like we starve for sunlight. And we’re terrified to voice this need.

Radical redpill and radical feminism are two sides of the same coin. Both are built on encouraging wounded people not to recover from broken attachment. And both generate wealth for the charlatans at the top who peddle sickness in the form of comfort.

Attachment issues are so pervasive that we normalize them instead of challenging them. The current generation cannot conceive that healthy attachment might exist. So they hide.

“I love you but I’m not in love with you” is a recipe for five divorces.

Some of my friends are ugly. Some are handsome. Some are millionaires. Some are broke.

They all have honor. Otherwise they would not be my friend.

Do not compromise where it matters. Tolerance for dishonor is not a virtue. It’s a knife at your back.

Honor consists of living to your principles at all times no matter the personal cost and making unflinching amends when you fall short.

Attachment issues push you to surrender your principles out of fear of abandonment.

This is why men with attachment issues hate themselves.

If it is dishonorable, don’t do it. Even if it’s legal. If legal punishment is your measure of right and wrong then you are at the moral level of an animal.

The number one question I get after people read this thread is: What is attachment?

So I released a video that explains the exact definition. Enjoy.

If your wife is propping up your entire reality, she’s not your wife. She’s your mother.

How to make friends as an adult

1) Get a hobby that people do in social settings
2) Go where people are doing it and do it with those people
3) Talk to people there about the hobby until you find a cool person
4) Ask “Want to be friends?”
5) Now you have a friend

It’s that easy

Young women when they’re single: “I am a fierce tiger made of unicorns, no man can tame me.”

Young women in a relationship: “I’m so worthless. Nobody loves me. Please don’t leave me.”

If this is you, this is a sign of broken attachment.

Husbands: You fix your relationship with your wife by fixing your relationships with your kids first.

If your kids are miserable in their relationships with you, she blames you. You're a threat to her children.

Fix that. Then she sees them happy, and she respects you for it.

Step one isn’t to figure out the solution. It’s to shut down your emotional right brain and restore energy to your logical left brain so you can process the situation in a calm way.

“Never apologize to your child!”

You want to teach them that adults sweep everything under the rug and pretend it never happened? To never take ownership of a mistake? That authority requires no respect from the governed?

Good luck being allowed to see your grandchildren.

The core of persuasion is offering value to achieve mutual fulfillment.

The core of manipulation is demanding value to fulfill yourself.

The lesson: If you want to attain good things, whether love or trust or loyalty, you must offer value. If you demand, you are manipulating.

Inheritance is NORMAL. Starting over at zero every single time is absolute insanity and constitutes deep neglect and contempt for one’s own descendants.

Kicking your kids out penniless at 18 so a family of 5 pays 4 rents, 4 utilities, and goes into debt to survive is stupidity.

A girl translates her father’s behavior toward her into expectations for what she’s worth. His parental love prepares her to accept male love. Take your daughter on many practice dates so she knows what’s normal before you send her out into a world of fools and predators.

The same people who say it’s “creepy” to have daddy-daughter dates also think sex on a first date is normal.

Their father failed them. In every way.

Socrates said “If you want to get to Mount Olympus, make sure every step you take is in that direction.”

The same is true of every principle in your life. If you want to be honorable, loving, wealthy, or grow a powerful family, make sure every step you take is in that direction.

When a father is good, he teaches his son to do good. When a father is bad, he teaches his son to do bad. To become good, his son must unlearn the bad and then learn the good before he can do that good.

This triples the son’s work and puts him years or decades behind.

Divorce is not normal.

The smartest way to beat your unwanted reactions is to lower your overall stress level.

If you're constantly at 7 out of 10, you've got no breathing room before you react. You'll shoot from the hip. That's especially bad when you're shooting at someone you care about.

Anxious parents make anxious kids.

If every parent took their duty as a parent to be the most sacred responsibility in their life, we could have a thriving culture in two generations.

Your life does not need to be easier. It needs to be simpler.

The Neolithic Revolution was about 11,700 years ago and our Hunter-Gatherer brains are barely catching up to those changes.

Imagine thinking it’s normal for a child to have chronic anxiety symptoms.

Then you diagnose them with ADHD and medicate them with stimulants when they can’t pay attention.

At age 7.

Food is medicine. It can make you sick or make you healthy.

You wouldn’t use medicine without understanding where it came from, how much to use, and what it’s supposed to do, right?

Picture all those county songs, and old movies, and ancient poems in our oldest literature that talk about how good it feels to go home.

Now imagine they’re talking about a rented one-bedroom apartment.

Humans are built for family settlements. But we’ve become nomadic loners.

People are so afraid to invest 2 years in their dream and risk being disappointed that they procrastinate for 10 years, miss their shot, and spend their last 50 years regretting missing out.

“You have to love yourself first” is crap. If you believe you’re unlovable, you can’t magically love yourself. People need to experience love before they believe they’re worth anything.

Healing starts with love. Give love where it’s needed. Go be someone’s reason for believing.

If your parents didn’t teach you a skill, but your child needs that skill from you, it is your job as a parent to learn that skill.

Most new fathers don’t feel close to their newborn. They see the mother bonding with the baby and try to do it too, but it doesn’t work the same. So they feel like a bad father.

There’s nothing wrong with you. Men bond differently.

A man who loves his child learns to protect his child.

If you're depressed and medication isn't helping, you need a better answer to deal with your depression.

Men and women both struggle with depression. And they tend to have different causes. But what factor do they share?

In short, we aren't meant to live the way we're living. Our lifestyle is causing the majority of all depression. And you won't heal until you fix it.

If the world makes you feel powerless, you’re thinking on the wrong scale.

You can’t control what a nation will do. But you CAN impact your local environment. People who need help. Kids in your life who need love.

1M people thinking local changes a nation. So think local.

According to the CDC, 19% of women experienced anxiety symptoms in the last 2 weeks. Other studies show 15% of women are anxious every single day.

This isn’t normal.

We've all heard the US divorce rate is 50%. This number is hammered into us over and over until we're afraid to get married. Why even try is it's just a coin toss?

It's NOT just a coin toss. That 50% stat is a lie.

“My friends don’t really like me. They’re just being nice.”

“No one would love me if they knew the real me.”

“I feel so alone. Even when I’m with people. ESPECIALLY when I’m with people.”

You don’t have to live with this pain. Fix your attachment.

Our society treats boys like defective girls. The education and medical institutions tell 10yo boys they’re automatically bad if they aren’t medicated. So they get slapped with an ADHD diagnosis and medicated into zombies.

Transparency breeds trust. Healthy people do not resent requests for transparency. They know transparency will deepen your relationship.

Looking strong makes people respect you. You can fight this, but it’s an uphill battle. Better to optimize your body to the best version you can.

You don’t have to be perfect, you need to be the best you.

We get so caught up in work and chores and checklists that we lose sight of what matters. When we remember, we're too exhausted. Our priorities fall apart, and we start to feel like life is just too much.

Your life does not need to be easier. It needs to be simpler.

Some people are so determined to remain emotional slaves that they get angry when you point out how they can save themselves.

“How do I fix broken attachment?”

—Three steps—

-Education: Learn what attachment is and why it matters.
-Connection: Open up to 3 people you trust.
-Systematic desensitization: Test the bonds many times so your brain learns you’re not unlovable.

US parents when you’re 18-20: “It’s time for you to be alone. I won’t help you. Nobody helped me, and look how good I turned out. Now get out and don’t come back.”

US parents when you’re 50: “Ok I blew your inheritance but I’m old and need help, you got me right?”

Not healthy.

"Why doesn't my wife trust me yet?"

This is the #1 question I heard when I helped men fix their attachment. What they were really asking was, "How long is this gonna take?"

But what their wife heard was, "How long do I have to pretend I've changed?"

When you make a change, you want everyone to believe you. To feel supported and embraced and encouraged.

But when you've maintained the same damaging behaviors for ten years and every 6 months tell your spouse you've changed, they run out of belief.

Both sides get frustrated.

Women say men aren’t loyal. But men will go to the same restaurant for 20 years and order the same dish every time and be sad when it changes.

Needing to be right will keep you friendless and stupid.

In my years as a marriage counselor, I learned to say one thing up front:

“I’m not here to convince either of you to work on your marriage. I can give you solutions to reach shared goals. If one of you isn’t willing to do the work, I can’t help you.”

If you want to succeed, you’ve got to get over the people who call themselves your friend but who undercut your attempts to get better. Who criticize you for working hard, insult you for showing your expertise, and complain about you pursuing your goal. They are not your friend.

If you cheat on your spouse, and you’ve got children together, you’ve also cheated on your kids.

Your spouse can recover, but you just destroyed your kids’ family. You betrayed their need for stability and trust. They’ve got a right to be angry.

“You think everything in the world is about attachment.”

I think our society is so perfectly structured to destroy attachment that solving it becomes the first step in most personal and social problems.

Let’s get everyone’s attachment fixed and then discuss the next steps.

Toxic masculinity gets blamed for everything. Domestic violence. School shootings. The crops not growing in. And ice on windshields.

Toxic masculinity is fake. Anyone who knows authentically masculine men can see why.

High sugar and caffeine intake, chronic poor sleep, and depleted selenium in our soil and foods are shown to cause constant decreased serotonin and may be a major factor in the American depression epidemic.

It’s always depression season. Check on your loved ones.

Most dating experts teach you to embrace your attachment problems and leverage them in others.

My kids are realizing that family takes work, so they want reassurance that family stays together.

Imagine if tomorrow I divorced their mom and said, “SOMETIMES PEOPLE JUST STOP LOVING EACH OTHER."

Our society pretends this is normal.

Reckless divorce is child abuse.

Unhappiness comes from believing you cannot make progress toward your goal.

If you crave to achieve financial security, run your dream business, have a loving family, be close to your spouse, or have the perfect body, and you believe progress is impossible, you’ll be unhappy.

If you want a better than normal day today, you must do some aspect of it better than normal. Rise to your own challenge and give yourself a better day.

Your brain tells you many things that are not true. This includes dictating what you should be afraid of. Fears are often misplaced associations. You can often overcome them by showing your brain it’s wrong. But your brain will fight you the whole way.

Today, love someone. Especially someone who doesn’t deserve it. The world gets better when we extend a hand to people who need it most. You don’t have to agree with them, or even like their choices, and they may reject your help. But your friendship and care is their best chance.

If you work harder on your job than you do on yourself, you’ll be left with a great job and a dead heart.

Men’s bonding is built on some rough teasing. It’s normal to test strength and challenge each other.

That’s one reason dudes with attachment issues have a hard time. It feels mean to do it and also it hurts when other men do it. So they avoid male bonding and confuse other men.

Realizing what you’re doing is the wrong way is a huge step because it ruins that behavior for you forever.

If you seek approval from others but learn there’s a better way to live and how approval seeking stops you from being happy, seeking approval becomes disgusting to you.

They don’t call them homewreckers anymore because couples aren’t getting married or making homes. They get a dog and pretend it’s a baby for 5 years until one of them gets tired of playing house and leaves for another relationship.

Having a dog baby together is playing house.

Fighting over dog custody is playing divorce.

As you parent, you will say and do things your parents said and did. Some of them will surprise you because you understand why they worked. Some will horrify you because you hated it so much that it drove a wedge between you and your parents.

Be careful which ones you pass on.

Some ADHD diagnoses are real. It’s a different neurology.

Most ADHD cases are normal boys loaded with sugar for breakfast and dealing with attachment issues from broken families and broken parenting.

The second group needs real help. Not drugs.

If you feed your kids heavy sugar breakfasts and then dose them up with ADHD meds because the teachers say they can’t sit still at school,

You’re parenting wrong.

It's awesome that millions of people have read this thread and are healing from it. My DMs are open if people need help or have questions.