Essays

Essays on self-awareness, emotional intelligence, identity, and the psychology of living with clarity, purpose, and connection.

Some truths don’t fit in a post — they need room to unfold.

These essays offer more than takes — they offer perspective. Drawing from psychology, lived experience, and cultural insight, each piece explores what it means to be self-aware, emotionally intelligent, and human in a complicated world. Written to make you think, feel, and come back to yourself — not just scroll past.

RJ Starr RJ Starr

The Archetypal Foundations of Ontological Experience

What if your disconnection isn’t depression, but a loss of archetypal grounding? This essay explores how ancient psychic structures shape our sense of self, purpose, and meaning. Drawing from Jungian psychology, it offers a path back to depth, presence, and inner coherence in a world that often rewards performance over being.

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RJ Starr RJ Starr

More Than Just Clutter

Hoarding isn’t about mess—it’s about memory, safety, and emotional overwhelm. This article unpacks the difference between clutter and hoarding disorder, challenging cultural mockery and offering a more compassionate, psychologically informed lens. Behind every pile is a story worth understanding.

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RJ Starr RJ Starr

Still Wanting More: On Aging, Place, and Visibility

Even when life appears full, there can be a quiet ache—a longing to feel visible, vital, and connected. This essay explores the emotional dissonance of midlife: the beauty you’ve built, the distance you feel, and the dignity of still wanting more. It’s not regret. It’s the quiet pulse of being fully alive.

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RJ Starr RJ Starr

Solitude and Loneliness: A Psychological Exploration

Solitude is not loneliness—it’s a skill rooted in emotional clarity and self-trust. This essay explores the psychological difference between being alone and being lonely, why we often confuse the two, and how reclaiming solitude can become one of the most powerful acts of emotional maturity.

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RJ Starr RJ Starr

Bread and Circuses 2.0: Performance, Distraction, and the Illusion of Engagement in the Social Media Age

We live in an age of constant performance and manufactured urgency. From viral dances to breaking news, today’s attention economy blurs reality and reaction, connection and spectacle. This essay explores how distraction has become a societal default—and what it means to reclaim silence, depth, and presence in a world that never stops performing.

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RJ Starr RJ Starr

Being the Adult in the Room: Emotional Immaturity in an Unhinged World

From airline meltdowns to viral tantrums and political spectacle, emotional immaturity has become the norm—not the outlier. This essay explores the quiet power of being the adult in the room: the one who stays calm, grounded, and emotionally intelligent in a world that rewards chaos. When everyone else is unraveling, maturity isn’t just a personal strength—it’s a public service.

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RJ Starr RJ Starr

What Kind of Neighbor Are You When No One’s Watching?

In shared spaces, kindness isn’t about grand gestures—it’s about tone, presence, and how we choose to treat each other when no one’s watching. This article explores the quiet psychology of neighborliness, the emotional cost of detachment, and why small acts of consideration—like a warm smile or a gentle reply—can change the emotional temperature of an entire community. What kind of neighbor are you becoming?

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RJ Starr RJ Starr

Anywhere But Here

The "anywhere but here" mindset reveals how chasing future happiness can erode presence. This article explores how comparison traps, the myth of arrival, and negativity bias fuel chronic dissatisfaction—and why true contentment begins not with changing circumstances, but with retraining attention toward the present.

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RJ Starr RJ Starr

The Psychology of Denial in a Crumbling America

Collective denial is a psychological defense that helps societies avoid uncomfortable truths. This article explores how confirmation bias, nostalgia, and social echo chambers fuel avoidance, and how breaking the cycle depends on fostering curiosity and creating spaces safe enough to face reality without fear.


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RJ Starr RJ Starr

Psychological Fallout of Tariff Policies

Tariff policies trigger cognitive biases that distort economic reality. This article explores how loss aversion and in-group favoritism make tariffs seem protective while masking their true costs, and how political rhetoric exploits these biases to create enduring "us vs. them" narratives around trade.

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RJ Starr RJ Starr

Why I Wrote “Gone Without Goodbye”

Gone Without Goodbye emerged from personal grief and the universal struggle to process sudden loss. This essay explores how creative expression transforms private pain into shared meaning and how storytelling helps preserve connections, confront absence, and find coherence in life’s disruptions.

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RJ Starr RJ Starr

The Psychology of Mockery

Mockery binds groups through shared laughter while excluding others through humiliation. This article explores how ridicule reinforces social hierarchies, masks insecurity, and inflicts real psychological pain, and why healthier forms of humor rooted in inclusivity offer a more constructive alternative.

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RJ Starr RJ Starr

Doomscrolling

Doomscrolling hijacks the brain’s threat-detection systems, trapping users in cycles of anxiety and compulsive news consumption. This article explains how negative news feeds reinforce stress patterns and offers science-backed strategies like media fasts and solution-focused habits to help break free.

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RJ Starr RJ Starr

Nations Watching, Leaders Mocking

Political mockery by world leaders triggers deep psychological responses that escalate tensions and harden diplomatic stances. This article examines how ridicule activates tribal defensiveness, bypasses rational negotiation, and creates lasting fractures in international relations in the social media era.

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RJ Starr RJ Starr

Time, Loss, and the Stories We Keep

Time loss stems from narrative disruption, not just busyness. This article explores how repetitive lives blur memory, creating the illusion of vanished years, and how intentional story-making through novelty, reflection, and purpose can restore our sense of time’s richness and depth.

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RJ Starr RJ Starr

When Clothing Becomes Control

Clothing serves as a psychological interface between self and society. This article explores how dress codes, uniforms, and fashion norms regulate behavior, reinforce hierarchies, and shape identity, revealing how even self-expression often conforms to socially pre-approved templates.

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RJ Starr RJ Starr

Magical Thinking and the Mind

Magical thinking arises from the mind’s need for patterns and control. This article explores how superstitions fulfill emotional needs, how threat-detection systems favor false positives, and why unchecked magical thinking can distort risk perception and fuel conspiracy beliefs in modern life.

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RJ Starr RJ Starr

The Rise of Hostile Elders

The "hostile elder" phenomenon stems from perceived status loss, cultural shifts, and aging-related negativity bias. This article explores how late-life hostility often reflects deeper struggles with relevance and how restoring purpose and fostering dialogue can ease intergenerational tensions.

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  • Emotional intelligence isn’t just a workplace skill or buzzword. It's the foundation of how we stay human in an overstimulated world. It’s how we create safety, connection, and clarity in the relationships that matter most.

  • Overthinking is rarely about insight. It’s about emotional avoidance disguised as analysis. True understanding begins not in your thoughts, but in your willingness to stay with what’s uncomfortable without trying to fix or escape it immediately.

  • Self-awareness is not a luxury or a personality trait, it’s a psychological infrastructure. Without it, we repeat patterns, misread situations, and lose the ability to act with intention instead of reaction.

  • Boundaries are not about pushing people away. They’re how we take emotional responsibility for what we can handle, what we value, and how we want to be treated in relationships that actually matter to us.

  • Emotional maturity isn’t measured by how little we feel. It’s shown in how we carry big emotions without letting them hijack our behavior. It’s the quiet strength of presence, not performance.

  • You don’t have to erase your past to heal, you just have to stop letting it silently write the present. Healing is a return to authorship over your life, not a denial of what shaped you.

  • Clarity often feels like calm. Not because everything is perfect, but because you’re no longer performing, pretending, or explaining yourself to people who never learned how to listen with care.

  • Self-trust is not about always knowing the answer. It’s about knowing you can stay present, even when you don’t. It’s a psychological anchor in a world that rewards dissociation and speed.

  • When we can name what we’re feeling without shame, we begin to reclaim agency over our inner life. Language is a psychological bridge between experience and understanding; it lets us carry what we used to avoid.

  • You are not “too much.” You are simply carrying the emotional weight of people who never learned to sit with discomfort, so they handed it to you instead.