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

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43 articles

16/09/20265 min readDefences & Patterns

How to Prompt a Human

With ChatGPT we check the prompt before blaming the machine. With people, we rarely do.

08/06/202613 min readTV & Film Psychology

Tip Toe Ending Explained: How a Neighbour Becomes a Monster

Russell T Davies' Tip Toe ends in a killing everyone saw coming. The harder thing is how an ordinary neighbour became a monster in another man's mind.

29/05/202615 min readTV & Film Psychology

Half Man: The Painter and the Rolling Hills

Half Man's 'painter and rolling hills' line is the key to the whole series. A psychodynamic reading of Ruben, Niall and what the ending really means.

16/04/20269 min readCulture & Technology

Clavicular's Overdose and the Limits of Contempt

Braden Peters collapsed on livestream and the internet turned him into a symbol. What gets missed is the person, and the shame underneath looksmaxxing.

13/03/20267 min readTV & Film Psychology

Louis Theroux, the Manosphere, and What the Controlled Access Really Tells You

Louis Theroux's Inside the Manosphere reveals something the reviews missed. A psychodynamic analysis of what happens when these men can't let women speak.

20/02/20269 min readTherapeutic Process

Why I Became a Male Therapist

The therapy profession is roughly 80% female. So what does it mean that a man chose this work? More than you might think.

19/02/202611 min readTV & Film Psychology

Why You Can't Stop Watching Married at First Sight Australia

The obsession with MAFS Australia isn't embarrassing. It's pointing at something real about intimacy, attachment, and what we're all quietly hoping for from relationships.

03/02/20267 min readTherapeutic Process

Is Couples Therapy Worth It?

Nobody googles this casually. You're asking because something between you has broken and you need to know if it can be fixed.

15/01/202610 min readDefences & Patterns

Why Do I Push People Away?

You want connection more than almost anything. And every time you get close to having it, you find a way to destroy it.

10/01/20266 min readCulture & Technology

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

If you prefer talking to a chatbot, you aren't broken. The machine is there at 3am, and it never makes you feel like you're too much.

03/01/20268 min readHuman 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.

26/12/20257 min readTV & 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.

28/11/20258 min readTV & Film Psychology

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

The sensitive kid never gets to be the hero. They feel too much, and they carry everyone else's anxiety.

07/11/20258 min readTV & 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.

01/11/20257 min readDefences & 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.

30/10/20257 min readTV & 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.

29/10/202511 min readDefences & 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.

29/08/20251 min readDefences & 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.

02/08/20254 min readCulture & Technology

The Machines Aren't Coming For Us

The real AI takeover won't need robot armies. We're volunteering.

14/04/20253 min readTherapeutic Process

Why a Square? The Meaning Behind the New Logo

The new logo is Talk to Luke and a square. The square is the frame.

12/03/20255 min readTV & 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.

13/12/20247 min readHuman 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.

28/11/20246 min readDefences & 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.

21/08/20247 min readTherapeutic Process

Croydon Talking Therapies: Understanding What's Actually on Offer

Your GP mentioned talking therapies and handed you a leaflet. What that usually means is CBT in various doses.

15/04/20246 min readHuman Experience

The Exhaustion of Passing

You've become so good at reading the room that you forgot you were doing it. The scanning, the adjusting, the constant translation - it feels like breathing now.

24/10/20235 min readHuman Experience

Leadership and Mental Health: Why Leaders Struggle in Silence

You're the one everyone comes to when things go wrong, and you have nowhere to go when you're the thing that's going wrong.

26/09/20236 min readTherapeutic Process

What LGBTQ-Affirming Therapy Actually Means

You've been in a session for ten minutes and you're already explaining yourself. Not the thing you came to talk about. Yourself.

09/04/20237 min readTherapeutic 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.

10/01/20237 min readTherapeutic Process

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

Six sessions in, just starting to trust, and they're already talking about endings.

24/12/20226 min readHuman Experience

Your Misery Is Ruining Christmas

Christmas is hard because other people need you to be happy about it.

09/08/20224 min readCulture & 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.

07/03/20226 min readDefences & Patterns

You're Not Lazy, You Might Be Ashamed

You've tried every productivity system going. Notion boards, Pomodoro timers, habit trackers, accountability partners. None of them lasted more than a fortnight.

12/10/20216 min readDefences & Patterns

The Ritual Isn't the Problem

You check the door three times before you can leave the house. Or you don't - your version is quieter than that, and harder to explain.

03/09/20216 min readTherapeutic Process

Why Therapy Isn't Working

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

09/01/20216 min readHuman Experience

When 'Too Much' Was Always About Them, Not You

You've been told you're too much your entire life. Too sensitive, too intense, too loud, too quiet, too literal, too emotional, too rigid.

09/05/20206 min readDefences & 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.

21/04/20205 min readHuman Experience

When Grief Gets Stuck

It's been two years. Or five. Or twelve. And something about this loss still hasn't settled.

23/01/20207 min readTherapeutic 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 isn't only your thoughts.

04/11/20195 min readHuman Experience

Your Panic Attacks Aren't Random

The first one came out of nowhere. At least that's what you told yourself, and A&E, and your GP.

15/08/20196 min readTherapeutic Process

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

The NHS called IAPT a world-beating standard. Recorded common mental health disorders still rose.

18/05/20186 min readDefences & Patterns

The Voice That Isn't Yours

You know the one. The voice that says you're not good enough, not smart enough, not trying hard enough. The one that arrives before you've even finished the thought.

31/03/20186 min readTherapeutic 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.

08/09/20175 min readTherapeutic Process

I Need Counselling; Should I Go Private?

You're asking the wrong question. The question isn't only whether you should go private.