
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Why We Love Violence: The Dark Psychology Behind Our Social Urge to Win, Control, and Punish
Why are we drawn to violence—not just in media, but in how we argue, assert, and dominate? This essay explores the deep psychology behind our cultural obsession with control, retaliation, and emotional release. Through the lenses of trauma, identity, and learned behavior, it unpacks what violence promises—and what it steals.
The Outrage Industrial Complex: How Emotion Became a Weapon, a Business, and a Way of Life
We’re not just exhausted—we’re emotionally overdrawn. This essay explores how media, politics, and social platforms profit from our outrage, why it feels addictive, and how we can reclaim emotional clarity in a culture that thrives on reactivity.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.