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

Asian Women: The Psychology of Visibility

Marginalized individuals often face the paradox of being both invisible and hyper-visible. This article explores how invisibility and objectification dehumanize in opposite ways and offers strategies like boundary-setting, selective visibility, and community solidarity to reclaim agency.

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RJ Starr RJ Starr

The Afternoon of Life: A Journey to Freedom and Meaning

The "afternoon of life" marks a midlife shift from external achievement to deeper meaning. This article explores how restlessness and disillusionment can spark authentic self-discovery, drawing on Jungian psychology to reveal the potential for renewed purpose and emotional freedom.

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RJ Starr RJ Starr

The Psychology of Decision-Making

Decision-making is shaped more by subconscious forces than pure logic. This article explores how biases, emotions, and environmental cues distort choices, how factors like overload and fatigue worsen decisions, and offers strategies to structure choices and manage emotional interference.

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RJ Starr RJ Starr

The Psychology of Resilience

Resilience is a dynamic process shaped by flexibility, coping strategies, and learned behaviors. This article explores emotional regulation, cognitive reframing, and purposeful action as core components, showing how resilience grows through manageable challenges, support, and self-compassion.

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RJ Starr RJ Starr

The Psychology of Lone-Actor Terrorists

Lone-actor terrorists are often driven by personal grievances, marginalization, and identity fusion with extremist narratives. This article explores how traits like alienation and victimhood combine with online radicalization, and how early warning signs could enable prevention efforts.

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RJ Starr RJ Starr

Ceremonies, Rituals and Purpose

Ceremonies and rituals meet psychological needs by turning ordinary moments into meaningful narratives. This article explores how structured traditions regulate emotions, mark transitions, and foster identity, emphasizing how intentional rituals combat modern alienation and provide existential grounding.

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RJ Starr RJ Starr

The “Us vs. Them” Mentality

The "us vs. them" mentality stems from evolutionary instincts and social identity needs, fostering division and conflict. This article explores how binary thinking fuels dehumanization and stereotypes, and how recognizing shared humanity and embracing complexity can help break the cycle.

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RJ Starr RJ Starr

The Psychology of Christmas Carols

Christmas carols hold psychological power by triggering nostalgia, strengthening social bonds, and evoking warmth and belonging. This article explores how their simple structures and traditions create emotional connections, serving as lasting markers of time and cultural identity.

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RJ Starr RJ Starr

Choosing Who We Become

Personal growth is not about finding a fixed self but actively shaping identity through deliberate action. This article explores how consistent choices, reflection, and behavioral commitments drive transformation, showing that true change emerges from reshaping habits and self-narratives over time.

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RJ Starr RJ Starr

The Psychology of Objectification

Objectification reduces people to tools or obstacles, fostering psychological distance and enabling harm. This article explores how dehumanizing language, stereotypes, and power imbalances diminish empathy, and offers strategies like agency restoration and perspective-taking to counteract it.

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RJ Starr RJ Starr

Public Shaming and the Psychology of Humiliation

Public shaming uses humiliation as social control, triggering primal fears of ostracism and deep psychological distress. This article explores how digital platforms amplify shame’s harm and highlights restorative alternatives that separate behavior condemnation from personhood destruction.

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RJ Starr RJ Starr

Understanding Social Anxiety and Avoidance

Social anxiety arises from fear of negative evaluation, driving avoidance behaviors that worsen distress over time. This article explores the psychological mechanisms behind the cycle and presents strategies like graduated exposure and cognitive restructuring to build resilience through discomfort.

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RJ Starr RJ Starr

The Hidden Psychology Driving the Decline of Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is declining not from lack of intelligence but from environments that discourage it. This article explores how cognitive overload, algorithmic curation, and social reinforcement erode deep analysis, and how intentional effort can help reclaim thoughtful engagement.

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RJ Starr RJ Starr

The Psychology of Cheap Content

In an age of viral snippets, society increasingly mistakes cheap content for real value. This article explores how shallow engagement erodes critical thinking and argues that reclaiming depth requires resisting algorithmic ease and intentionally prioritizing substance over superficiality.

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RJ Starr RJ Starr

The Psychology of Family Conflict

Holiday family tensions often stem from clashing expectations and unresolved history, not surface disagreements. This article explores how shifting from debate to active listening and empathy can defuse conflict and foster genuine connection or peaceful coexistence.

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RJ Starr RJ Starr

Understanding Resistance to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Resistance to DEI initiatives often stems from perceived threats to identity or fairness beliefs, not outright prejudice. This article explores how understanding underlying fears and motivations can foster more effective engagement and reduce polarization around equity efforts.

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RJ Starr RJ Starr

Anchored in the Past

Cognitive anchoring and stability bias cause us to judge others based on first impressions, even when new evidence emerges. This article explores how outdated perceptions persist and how recognizing these mental shortcuts can help us make fairer, more accurate assessments.

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RJ Starr RJ Starr

Misinformation and Political Polarization: A Social Psychology Perspective

Misinformation thrives in polarized environments by exploiting tribal psychology and group identity. This article explores how confirmation bias and motivated reasoning fuel echo chambers and argues that breaking the cycle requires addressing the social needs behind polarization, not just correcting facts.

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RJ Starr RJ Starr

Embracing Life as an Introvert Homebody

Introversion and homebody tendencies are often misunderstood as limiting, but they offer deep satisfaction and fulfillment. This article explores the psychological benefits of a quieter, inward-focused lifestyle and offers strategies for thriving in an extrovert-driven culture.

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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.