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Aaron Balick 🍉

@aaronbalick.com

1.8K followers 2.4K following 1.1K posts

Leading voice on how tech & culture shape the psyche. Psychotherapist | Consultant | Psych writer at GQ | Keynote speaker | Author of The Psychodynamics of Social Networking | aaronbalick.com

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Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 3d

Why the world needs more imposter syndrome, not less.

My latest for GQ:

www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/why-...

Why the world needs more imposter syndrome, not less

Feel inadequate or out of your depth? Believe or not, it's usually a good sign. Meanwhile people incapable of doubting themselves are wreaking havoc in the world

www.gq-magazine.co.uk

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 8h

I was a little slow on the uptake on this one. I’m gutted. We have lost Annie Hall and Kay Corleone. So sad.

a woman wearing a hat and vest says la-de-dah on the screen

ALT: a woman wearing a hat and vest says la-de-dah on the screen

media.tenor.com

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 9h

Feel inadequate or out of your depth? Believe or not, might be a good sign. Meanwhile people incapable of doubting themselves are wreaking havoc .

Why the world needs more imposter syndrome, not less.

www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/why-...

Why the world needs more imposter syndrome, not less

Feel inadequate or out of your depth? Believe or not, it's usually a good sign. Meanwhile people incapable of doubting themselves are wreaking havoc in the world

www.gq-magazine.co.uk

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 9h

We thrill in horror at their feistiness. They were loud, hungry, reckless and free, except for the hundreds of millions they left behind.”

7/7

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 9h

They were big and brave, superb scholars and scientists, musicians, actors and athletes, and they were idiots who were throwing it all away, even as their high culture lamented or roared in pain.

6/7

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 9h

Such liberty and abandon, such fearful defi-ance. They were brilliant in their avarice, quarrelsome beyond imagining, ready to die for bad and good ideas alike. As science extended its domain, religious belief and conspiracy theories swelled.

5/7

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 9h

Then, of course, hardly worth repeating, they watched amazed as the decades sped by and the Derangement gathered pace, the weapons proliferated and they did little, even as they knew what was coming and What was needed.

4/7

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 9h

But they also spelled out the human genome, invented the internet, made a start on AI and placed a beautiful golden telescope a million miles out in space.

3/7

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 9h

“What brilliant invention and bone-headed greed. What music, what tasteless art, what wild breaks and sense of humour: people flying 2,000 miles for a one-week holiday; buildings that touched the cloud base; razing ancient forests to make paper to wipe their back-sides.

2/7

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 9h

Imagine it’s 100 years in the future and your a scholar of English Lit. 1990 - 2030 (before the degradation and inundation). This is how you’d imagine us, from the mind of the wonderful Ian McEwan in “What We Can Know”:

1/7

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 1d

“A recent systematic review reported that chatbot-based interventions can improve mental distress but not psychological well-being.”

psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/...

Special Report: AI-Induced Psychosis: A New Frontier in Mental Health | Psychiatric News

PsychiatryOnline.org is the platform for all American Psychiatric Association Publishing journals, DSM, and bestselling textbooks, as well as APA Practice Guidelines, and continuing medical education.

psychiatryonline.org

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 2d

If you read this as my implying thar RFK and Trump have an inferiority complex, I won’t argue.

Psychologically, the capacity to tolerate uncertainty is a developmental achievement. Overconfidence is a tell-tale sign of compensating for feelings of inadequacy.

www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/why-...

Why the world needs more imposter syndrome, not less

Feel inadequate or out of your depth? Believe or not, it's usually a good sign. Meanwhile people incapable of doubting themselves are wreaking havoc in the world

www.gq-magazine.co.uk

Reposted by Aaron Balick 🍉

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 3d

Why the world needs more imposter syndrome, not less.

My latest for GQ:

www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/why-...

Why the world needs more imposter syndrome, not less

Feel inadequate or out of your depth? Believe or not, it's usually a good sign. Meanwhile people incapable of doubting themselves are wreaking havoc in the world

www.gq-magazine.co.uk

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 3d

The contempt this man has for those he was elected to lead is off the charts.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/07/u...

White House Signals It May Try to Deny Back Pay to Furloughed Federal Workers

www.nytimes.com

Reposted by Aaron Balick 🍉

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 3d

Ever considered that your imposter syndrome might be a good thing?

www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/why-...

Why the world needs more imposter syndrome, not less

Feel inadequate or out of your depth? Believe or not, it's usually a good sign. Meanwhile people incapable of doubting themselves are wreaking havoc in the world

www.gq-magazine.co.uk

Reposted by Aaron Balick 🍉

BiteSize Therapy @bitesizetherapy.bsky.social · 3d

“I’ve trained scores of therapists only to find that the self-doubting ones worry me a lot less than those that are overly certain.”
- @aaronbalick.com

A great article 👏🏻

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 3d

Thank you!

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 3d

Ever considered that your imposter syndrome might be a good thing?

www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/why-...

Why the world needs more imposter syndrome, not less

Feel inadequate or out of your depth? Believe or not, it's usually a good sign. Meanwhile people incapable of doubting themselves are wreaking havoc in the world

www.gq-magazine.co.uk

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 3d

Why the world needs more imposter syndrome, not less.

My latest for GQ:

www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/why-...

Why the world needs more imposter syndrome, not less

Feel inadequate or out of your depth? Believe or not, it's usually a good sign. Meanwhile people incapable of doubting themselves are wreaking havoc in the world

www.gq-magazine.co.uk

Reposted by Aaron Balick 🍉

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 4d

Motivation to do great work that happens to result in a Nobel Prize trumps wanting a Nobel Prize to demonstrate to yourself and the world that you’re actually a good person.

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 4d

Motivation to do great work that happens to result in a Nobel Prize trumps wanting a Nobel Prize to demonstrate to yourself and the world that you’re actually a good person.

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 5d

Watts is hardly a purist - he mixes up Taoism, Buddhism, Advaita - so I agree it’s not precise. But he has a knack of bringing you to the core of a concept - however agglomerated that concept.

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 5d

Thank you for you commentary!

Reposted by Aaron Balick 🍉

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 5d

Probably the best, and certainly the most useful, description of the Buddhist concept of emptiness a non-scholar could ever ask for. As ever, by Alan Watts:

1/8

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 5d

All of a sudden it will strike you that this nothingness is the most potent, magical, basic, and reliable thing you ever thought of, and that the reason you can't form the slightest idea of it is that it's yourself. But not the self you thought you were.”

8/8

Aaron Balick 🍉 @aaronbalick.com · 5d

Indeed, you seem to be rather firmly and certainly grounded in nothingness, much as your sight seems to emerge from that total blankness behind your eyes. The weird feeling goes with the fact that you are being introduced to a new common sense, a new logic of void and form.

7/8