Face Your Fear

Help along the way.

by Craig D. Marker, Ph.D.

Wear it Like Armor and it Can Never Be Used to Hurt You.

Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones provides great advice for people with social anxiety. Read More

Safety Behaviors in Social Anxiety

In social anxiety, playing it safe leads to unintended long-term consequences. Read More

Fear of Positive Evaluation

Sometimes it is not fun to be the center of attention. Read More

In starting this project, I wondered how much reading comments and discussing my acts became a reward for myself (rather than a truly altruistic act). Thus, I stopped posting but continued the project. In the past year I have had some amazing experiences (and some not so good ones) Read More

Altruism, Heroics, and Extreme-Altrusim

A common contrast to altruistic acts are acts of psychopathy. Psychopaths are people who have little or not remorse for their actions. They are thought to not feel empathy for others. Thus, they act in very selfish ways to promote their own welfare. Thus, it would seem that people who we would consider to be prototypes of altruism (e.g., Mother Teresa or Gandhi) would be considered as complete opposites to psychopaths.

Do extreme altruists share traits with psychopaths? Read More

New Ideas for Altruistic Acts

One idea I had for an altruistic act is talking with people and showing genuine caring for them. Read More

Feeding the Homeless

My main act of compassion so far has been feeding people who are homeless. It has been my mainstay act of altruism. There are relatively many people who are homeless near me and I can do this pretty anonymously. That is, I can 'sneak up' on them and give them a bag of food pretty quickly without getting praise or really even being identified (I often find people who are sleeping).

Recently I began a little experiment to see whether I could do one altruistic act a day. There are many people who do a great many things, so it is often intimidating to think that doing one altruistic act a day could get very far. However, my hope is that it inspires others to also do generous acts for others. Maybe my one drop in the bucket won't account for much, but one drop is a good start.