The Exhausting Project of Being Someone
Most of the suffering people bring into therapy is tangled up in the same project: the effort to be a coherent, stable, defensible self. What if the work is not to build a better one but to need less of one?
Why Knowing Your Brain Isn’t the Same as Knowing Yourself
Pop neuroscience offers brain-based explanations that sound like insight but actually prevent self-knowledge. A psychodynamic therapist on why “dopamine seeking” tells you nothing about your life — and what real understanding looks like.
Why Google Always Tells You to Try CBT
Google recommends CBT for almost everything — but what about the people it didn’t work for? A psychodynamic therapist examines why CBT dominates search results, what it does well, where it falls short, and what deeper therapy actually looks like.
The “Withdrawer” in the Bedroom: How Conflict Avoidance Kills Intimacy
Are you a “Withdrawer” in arguments? Learn how this attachment style leads to sexual avoidance (“intimacy anorexia”) and how to break the cycle.
Spectatoring: Why Watching Yourself Have Sex Kills Desire (And How to Stop)
Are you “watching” yourself during sex instead of feeling it? Learn how “spectatoring” causes ED and avoidance, and discover 3 steps to move from performance to presence.
It’s Not Low Testosterone, It’s High Shame: Understanding Sexual Avoidance
Is your low libido or ED medical or psychological? This comprehensive guide explores “The Body’s Veto”: how shame and the “Performance of Self” cause sexual avoidance in men.
Is It Your Relationship, or Is It Lack of Purpose?
Explore how a lack of personal purpose or meaning can manifest as relationship anxiety, anxious attachment, and a fixation on validation.
When Your Porn Use Causes a Crisis of Conscience
Explore why your porn use might not be an “addiction” but a deep moral or values conflict. Learn how shame, not content, is the real issue.
The Fairy Tale Trap: When ‘Perfect Love’ Is a Perfect Way to Avoid Real Intimacy
Discover how a belief in a Disney-like, “perfect” romance can be an unconscious defense mechanism to avoid the vulnerability and effort of real intimacy.