Writing

Blog

Psychology, culture, and what's actually going on underneath.

10/01/2026•Culture & Technology

Talking to AI About Feelings? Why It Feels Safer Than Therapy

If you prefer talking to a chatbot, you aren't broken. Explore why AI feels safer than human connection, and what true healing requires beyond the screen.

03/01/2026•Human Experience

Why Your New Year's Resolutions Keep Failing (And What's Actually Going On)

It's January. You've made the list. By February, you'll have quietly abandoned most of it. This isn't a failure of willpower. It's something else entirely.

26/12/2025•TV & Film Psychology

Heated Rivalry Ending Explained: 'The Cottage' & Why Love Needs an Enemy

A therapist's analysis of 'The Cottage', the Heated Rivalry finale. Why Shane and Ilya's rivalry is a psychological defence and what it means for Season 2.

28/11/2025•TV & Film Psychology

Stranger Things 'Sorcerer': Will Byers and the Wounded Healer

The sensitive kid never gets to be the hero. They feel too much, notice too much, carry everyone's anxiety in their body before a word is spoken...

07/11/2025•TV & Film Psychology

Pluribus Episodes 1 & 2 Review: What the Show Gets Right About Emotional Avoidance (Spoilers)

A new Apple TV show accidentally nails what therapy rarely addresses: when happiness stops being a feeling and becomes a defence.

01/11/2025•Defences & Patterns

I Don't Know What I Feel

Someone asks how you feel about something that just happened - a breakup, a job loss, your father's cancer diagnosis - and you go blank.

30/10/2025•TV & Film Psychology

What The Roses Gets Wrong About Couples Therapy

The Roses opens in couples therapy. They're asked to name ten things they love about each other. What the film gets wrong is the response.

29/10/2025•Defences & Patterns

Therapy Speak Is Ruining Your Relationships

You know all the words now. Gaslighting. Narcissist. Triggered. Boundaries. And somehow your relationships still aren't working.

03/09/2025•Therapeutic Process

Why Therapy Isn't Working

You're doing everything right and still getting nowhere. Not because therapy doesn't work, but because you're having it about your life, not in it.

29/08/2025•Defences & Patterns

The Performance Trap

The exhausting performance of being 'easy to talk to' and how it cuts us off from the very connection we're desperate for.

21/08/2025•Therapeutic Process

Croydon Talking Therapies: Understanding What's Actually on Offer

Your GP mentioned "talking therapies" and handed you a leaflet. The NHS website has reassuring language about "evidence-based psychological therapies....

15/08/2025•Therapeutic Process

The Great CBT Experiment: How We Turned Mental Health Into a Production Line

Since 2008, the NHS has treated over a million people annually through IAPT (Improving Access to Psychological Therapies). It's been called a "world-b...

09/08/2025•Culture & Technology

We've Turned Discomfort Into a Design Problem

Most of our 'dopamine problems' aren't neurological. They're what happens when we've engineered every moment of potential discomfort out of existence.

02/08/2025•Culture & Technology

The Machines Aren't Coming For Us

The real AI takeover won't need robot armies. We're not being conquered. We're volunteering. Someone's asking ChatGPT how to respond to their grieving friend...

09/05/2025•Defences & Patterns

The Fortress You Built to Protect Yourself is Your Prison

We don't build walls to keep people out. We build them to keep ourselves in. That's the truth about emotional protection.

14/04/2025•Therapeutic Process

Why a Square? The Meaning Behind the New Logo

You might notice things look a little different around here. The new logo on my website is subtle. Just the words "Talk to Luke" and a simple square....

31/03/2025•Therapeutic Process

Therapy Isn't About Fixing You. It's About Understanding You

You've been trying to fix yourself for years. Maybe decades. You've read the books, tried the apps, implemented the morning routines. And you're exhausted.

12/03/2025•TV & Film Psychology

The Severance of Therapy: The Psychology of 'Innies', 'Outties', and Transference

Severance's split between 'innie' and 'outtie' mirrors the therapeutic relationship, transference, and what it means to be a tech worker.

13/12/2024•Human Experience

What Borderline Personality Disorder Actually Feels Like

Someone you've been dating for three weeks doesn't text back for two hours and your brain goes: 'They hate me. I'll die alone.' That's BPD.

28/11/2024•Defences & Patterns

You Don't Need Better Mental Health

Mental health has become another performance to optimise and track. What you actually need is the capacity to stop coping so hard.

24/10/2023•Human Experience

Leadership and Mental Health: Why Leaders Struggle in Silence

You're drowning, but everyone else is looking to you for a life raft. That's the particular hell of leadership when your mental health is falling apart.

09/04/2023•Therapeutic Process

Rewriting the Code: How Psychodynamic Therapy Helps Us Understand Our Early Programming

You've been living someone else's script and calling it your personality. These aren't traits - they're survival strategies from before you could speak.

10/01/2023•Therapeutic Process

The Limits of Short-Term Therapy: Why 8 Sessions Often Isn't Enough

You've probably been there. Six sessions in, just starting to trust your therapist, and they're already talking about "endings" and "consolidating you...

24/12/2022•Human Experience

Your Misery Is Ruining Christmas

Christmas isn't hard because of money or grief or loneliness - though all of those are real. Christmas is hard because other people need you to be hap...

22/12/2022•Human Experience

Online Therapy for Expats: When Your Entire Identity Gets Lost in Translation

Moving abroad doesn't just change your postcode - it demolishes everything you thought you knew about yourself. The Identity Crisis No One Warns You ...

23/01/2020•Therapeutic Process

What Psychodynamic Therapy Actually Does: Beyond Surface Solutions

You've done CBT three times. Got a drawer full of anxiety worksheets. Still stuck in the same patterns. The problem was never your thoughts.

08/09/2017•Therapeutic Process

I Need Counselling; Should I Go Private?

You're asking the wrong question. The question isn't whether you should go private. The question is whether you can afford to keep waiting for a syste...