It appears to me that quite of few people in this thread seem to criticize the concepts from the article on the ground that it's some kind of "self-help mumbo j

It appears to me that quite of few people in this thread seem to criticize the concepts from the article on the ground that it's some kind of "self-help mumbo jumbo" (for the lack of a better term). I quickly skimmed the article and whereas I can't tell if it makes sense as a whole (I would have to persue it and think for a while), the individual concepts there resemble tools from ancient philosophies. For instance, the mannequin issue is basically a stoic concept of "testing your impressions", i.e. check whether they are what they seem to be. Basically, your mind is constantly receiving so called impressions (sensory inputs), along with quick attempts by the brain to classify them (thoughts). And then one's task is to either assent, dissent or suspend the judgement of the impression. In the case of the mannequin from the article, the (false) impression is the image, along with a quick thought "it's a man". Obviously the situation is very low stake, so it doesn't matter that much if we assent to a false impression, but in high stake situations assenting to false impression might be the cause or factor of anxiety or depression. (Also, this is similar to challenging your thoughts in CBT, although I don't think CBT deals with trivial stuff like classifying mannequins. Whereas in Stoicism there's this classic example of misidentifying a wax apple as a real thing, so it was a better fit.)