For the inner work that doesn’t shout. Emotional steadiness, self-trust, meaning, and the kinds of insights you only earn by living long enough to notice what actually matters.
For a long time, I believed that understanding myself better would make me feel less alone. Not in a naive way — I didn’t think self-knowledge was a substitute for actual connection. I thought it was a precondition for it. That if I could understand what I felt and why, I could finally say it […]
According to research from Dr. John Gottman, who spent decades studying couples in a laboratory at the University of Washington, both partners in a relationship are emotionally available to each other only about nine percent of the time. This leaves the other ninety-one percent of the relationship ripe, as Gottman put it, for miscommunication. The
Sometime in the first few weeks after the last child moves out, a lot of parents discover the grocery shopping has not adjusted. The cart fills with the same things it always did: the particular brand of something one child liked, the snack that was always in the cabinet, the portions that made sense for
There is a particular kind of suffering that doesn’t announce itself as a philosophical problem. It shows up as a tight chest at 2am. A loop of what-ifs that refuse to resolve. A restlessness that follows you into situations you’ve been assured should feel good. You go on the holiday and feel worse. You get
“If you don’t have self-awareness and are not able to manage your distressing emotions, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far.” — Daniel Goleman There is a version of success that looks, from the outside, like pure ability. The person who thinks faster, knows more, performs
Think about a moment in your life when you felt genuinely, uncomplicated happy. Not relieved, not proud, not satisfied that something went as planned — but just present, and good, and fully there. Now try to remember whether, in that moment, you were thinking about how to be happy. Almost certainly, you weren’t. You were
The happiest moments in your life probably had one thing in common: you weren’t trying Read More »
“Dinner!” someone’s mother calls. Not into a phone, not through an app. Just out the back door, toward the general direction of the street, in a voice calibrated by practice to carry exactly far enough. Three blocks over, a different name. Two houses down, the specific two-syllable call that means right now, not in five
I cannot remember exactly when I started using AI. It was indeed long before ChatGPT. Before any of the current wave of anything. It crept in gradually, the way most habits do and started becoming a presence in my life. All I know is that it happened gradually, which is probably why it felt so
Yes, AI might be useful in mental health. No, that still doesn’t make it therapy Read More »
Two people at a restaurant. One opens the menu from the middle and orders what sounds good without looking at the price first. The other works from the price column, scans it twice, hesitates before choosing something at the higher end, and puts the change back into their wallet with care. From the outside, the
