You understand your attachment style. You've read the books, maybe done years of therapy. You can explain, with impressive precision, exactly why you do the things you do. And then you do it again.

There's a particular kind of exhaustion that shows up in therapy offices, and it doesn't belong to people who are avoiding their problems. It belongs to people who are trying, hard, to fix themselves.

On community disconnection, why it hurts, and what we can do about it There's a particular kind of ache that a lot of people carry quietly — not quite grief, not quite depression, not quite anxiety. When asked to describe it, people reach for words like hollow , untethered , or invisible . They say things like: "I have friends, but I don't feel known." Or: "I'm surrounded by people and still feel alone." We've gotten very good at treating this as a personal problem — a sign o

This is the argument for a holistic approach to mental health: not as a soft alternative to rigorous care, but as the more accurate account of what a human being actually is.

Emotional schemas are implicit learnings—"if-then" rules encoded in emotional memory—that predict what will happen if we do certain things. They're not thoughts we consciously believe. They're felt truths that live in our bodies and guide our behaviour automatically.

What if everything you've been taught about human nature is wrong? What if the cynicism baked into our institutions, our media, our parenting, and even our therapy models is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of who we are? These are the questions Rutger Bregman tackles in his book Humankind: A Hopeful History, and their implications for mental health are profound and far-reaching.

Terry Real's book Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship offers a radical challenge to how we've been taught to think about relationships, mental health, and personal growth in contemporary Western culture.

Kasia Urbaniak's Unbound: A Woman's Guide to Power is one of those rare books that makes you realize how deeply you've internalized frameworks that work against you. Drawing from her unusual background as both a Taoist nun and a professional dominatrix, Urbaniak offers a radical reimagining of power—particularly for women, but with implications that ripple across all gender identities and expressions.

What we believe about people becomes how people behave, including ourselves. This is the nocebo effect writ large, and understanding it might be one of the most important mental health interventions available to us.

Intellectualization—one of the most socially acceptable and often invisible ways we protect ourselves from emotional pain.

One of the most misunderstood concepts in contemporary therapy culture is boundaries. Everyone talks about them, books are written about them, social media is full of boundary-setting advice. But much of what gets called "boundary-setting" is actually something else entirely—and the confusion causes real problems in relationships.

There are certain books that don't just tell a story—they hold up a mirror. Stephanie Foo's memoir, What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma, is one of those rare works that manages to be both deeply personal and universally resonant for anyone who has lived with Complex PTSD or attachment trauma. As a therapist, I often hear clients say, "I thought I was the only one who felt this way." This sense of isolation is one of the most painful aspects of CPTSD. F

In North American media and leadership culture, we face a profound representation gap—one that doesn't just shape what we watch or who we vote for, but fundamentally impacts how we understand ourselves and relate to others.

You've been in therapy. You've done the work. You've developed healthier boundaries, better communication skills, and stronger emotional regulation. You've processed trauma, understood your patterns, and genuinely changed how you show up in your life. You feel good about your growth—proud, even. And then you arrive at the house where your family is for the holidays. Within hours, you're: Reverting to childhood defence mechanisms you thought you'd outgrown Feeling emotions wit

One of the most common struggles I see in therapy, particularly with clients who experienced attachment trauma, is the question: "How do I know what's good enough?" This seemingly simple question touches something profound—the difficulty of developing your own internal compass for evaluating your life, relationships, accomplishments, and self-worth when your early experiences didn't provide a reliable foundation for knowing what you deserve or what's reasonable to expect. If

The term "gaslighting" has become ubiquitous in recent years, appearing in conversations about everything from romantic relationships to workplace dynamics to political discourse. But as the term has gained popularity, its meaning has become diluted and distorted. People now use "gaslighting" to describe any disagreement, misunderstanding, or instance of someone being wrong—watering down a term that describes a specific and psychologically damaging pattern of behaviour.

We live in a culture that sends deeply conflicting messages about emotions. On one hand, we're told to "follow our hearts" and "trust our feelings." On the other, we're praised for being "rational," "logical," and "in control" of our emotions—as if emotions are wild animals that need taming or inconvenient impulses to be managed and suppressed.

Parts work—the practice of identifying, dialoguing with, and healing these different aspects of ourselves—has a rich history across multiple therapeutic traditions.

Therapy is one of the most personal and significant investments you can make in yourself, but it's not always a straightforward journey.

If you've ever found yourself analyzing your emotions rather than feeling them, explaining your inner experience rather than experiencing it, or understanding your patterns without actually changing them, you're not alone.