The meaning we ascribe to an experience may matter more than the experience itself. Last week I did an intensive and worked with a young woman whose life was transformed by a story I shared with her. Although discussing childhood experiences is not the focus of my work with couples during intensives, Sharon talked a great deal about how she was raised. To say that she had it tough would be a vast understatement. Both of her parents were drug addicts and unable to properly nurture or protect their 6 children. As is often the case in chaotic families, the children “raised each other.” Sharon shared that her parents divorced when she was 6, and that although her mother was working on becoming sober, her father was a heroin addict. Still, she was sent to her dad’s house for regular visits. Her father often had other drug addicts hanging around his house when she visited. One of these men, Sharon said, sexually abused her. This happened on several occasions. Additionally, Sharon admitted that her own brother sexually abused her for 4 years and told her that he would hurt her if she ever told anyone. She never did. As Sharon talked about these experiences, she cried, explaining that she felt shame and disgust because she allowed these things to happen in her life. Even though the abuse had happened long ago, the feeling of self-contempt was omnipresent. She believed that, somehow, she should have stopped the abuse. I reminded Sharon that she was just a little girl when the abuse took place and that it was not her fault; her parents should have protected her. A wonderful protective parent today of three young children, she agreed, but still, she had been unable to shake the feeling that she was damaged goods. That’s when I knew I had to tell her a story of a client whom I worked with many years before. This client told me that she lived alone and that she was runner; every day at the same time, she would set off on her run, taking the same path. One day, she returned to her apartment after her run, and the door closed behind her. There stood a masked man with a knife in his hand. At once, she realized that she might get raped, but was determined that she would get out of the situation alive. The man did, in fact, rape her, but when he got distracted for a moment, she got out of his grip, and ran across the street to a neighbor’s house stark naked. The neighbor gave her some clothes and called the police. The police arrived and interrogated her as to what had just happened. This woman calmly and carefully outlined the events that had taken place. Noting her calm demeanor, the policeman said, “Ma'am, I don’t get it. You were just raped at knifepoint and you are telling me this story so calmly. How is that possible?” Her response forever changed my thinking about traumatic experiences. Here’s what she told the cop: “You don’t think that I’m going to let 15 minutes with that f---er ruin my life, do you?” The rape did not ruin her life. For years, she volunteered at a rape crisis center, supporting other victims. She took pride in her resilience and wanted to share her perspective with others. I watched Sharon’s face when I told her this story. Her eyes lit up. She smiled. Her body relaxed. I hoped that this story of resilience would begin to percolate in Sharon’s mind. The next day, Sharon began the session by saying that a gigantic weight had been lifted. She said that all of her life, she had felt dirty and unworthy. But after hearing that story, she felt relief. Sharon told me that she looked in the mirror that morning, and for the first time, she liked what she saw. Perhaps as you read this story and how my client of so long ago responded to that vile act that day, you might have been thinking, “Was she in denial?” “Won’t she eventually experience PTSD if she doesn’t do a deep dive into the trauma of what happened?” “Don’t victims of sexual crimes require years of therapy to heal their spirits?” I get it. There was a time in my career that I would have thought those things too. But after decades of working with people, I’ve learned that everyone is different, and how we deal with life experiences differs greatly. How ludicrous it is to believe that each person must go through the same process to heal. How wonderful it is to know that the meaning we ascribe to our experiences is even more significant than the experiences themselves. As this young couple left the intensive, the woman gave me a hug that nearly took my breath away because she squeezed me so hard. I had to fight back tears because I understood the emotion behind her embrace. Michele Weiner-Davis, MSW. - Blog

Relationships with family and friends are crucial for happiness and well-being. Key points Emotional pain may cause withdrawal, isolation, and loneliness. Investing in friendships and having a shared purpose can boost happiness. Focusing on something bigger than oneself increases emotional well-being. Gray divorce refers to marriages that end after age 50. Currently, 36% of U.S. adults getting divorced are 50 or older. Kathleen, 60, has been divorced for nine years and struggles with loneliness, lingering sadness, and mild depression. As I watched her interact with my therapy dog, Friede, I noticed she seemed more energized, and her mood was more positive than in our previous sessions. She even giggled when Friede entertained us briefly with her zoomies before we began. "Can you believe that this isn't the first time I have smiled since we met in our last session?" she asked me. "I believe it. What's your smile about?" "I did what I said I would do," she said. "I made a list of ways I can begin to implement the number-one recommendation on the handout you gave me — investing in my relationships with my friends and family. By the way, that was a very helpful handout, although it was painful for me to read." I asked her why it was painful and she replied, "As an introvert, it was challenging for me. You know my relationships with my kids are strained, and except for my kids, I have no living family. I felt the heaviness of my aloneness, and it hit me hard." Kathleen paused as the words caught in her throat, and tears gently slid down her cheeks. "So I focused on Philip, the nice man I've been seeing for the past two years, and my friends, Gail and Marybeth, who've been my friends for years. They've all been very supportive of me while I've been feeling so down." She paused and took several slow, deep breaths. "Your connections with Phillip, Gail, and MaryBeth are deep, aren't they?" I asked. Kathleen closed her eyes, sighed, and replied slowly, emphasizing each word: "Yes. They - truly - are - deep - connections." For a minute or so, she stared at the bookshelf across the room. Then she continued. "I never thought about it until you said it. They really are deep connections. It's comforting to think of it that way, and I don't feel so alone." "When we are in emotional pain and feeling such loss as you have been feeling about how your former husband, his wife, and your children have treated you," I said, "it's easy to focus only on what's missing rather than what we have." "Yes, that's exactly what I have been doing. I was focusing on my losses rather than my connections with those who were there for me. I need to let that sink in for a minute." Kathleen sat in silence as she scratched Friede's head and ears. "I talked with each of them separately and told them that I realized I had been keeping them at a distance because I was hurting so much about how my ex, his wife, and especially my kids were treating me." "We humans try to protect ourselves from pain like the pain you've been feeling," I said. "Deep pain like that can make us avoid being vulnerable to being hurt by others. The word vulnerable comes from the Latin word for to wound. So, we are avoiding allowing others to wound us. "Protecting ourselves from emotional pain is a natural reaction. It's part of our survival instinct." Kathleen fell silent and closed her eyes for a couple of minutes. Friede snuggled closer to her. After taking another long, deep breath, she continued: "Last Sunday, I continued my work in investing in my relationships with my friends. I made brunch and invited the three of them to my place. I thanked them for being there for me for so long, and I showed them the handout you gave me. "We discussed the second recommendation — about joining a club or community to share what we care about — and we decided to combine the two recommendations and become a team! We have been volunteering at our local literacy outreach program." "Wow! You certainly dived into the recommendations! In our last session, you said that you were sad, although you didn’t think you were clinically depressed. What do you think now?" "Well," she told me, "I am feeling more uplifted and connected with Phillip, Marybeth, and Gail. They continue to be so supportive, just as they were before. I guessed you would ask me why I'm feeling this way, and my answer is that I am the one who has changed. As I reflected on the handout, I thought, 'I am the one who needs to change.' So, I have been working on it, and they have dived in with me. I have opened myself up to really feeling our connection and doing my part to invest my time and care in them, and what we care about that is bigger than ourselves." Carol R. Hughes, Ph.D.-Blog, Website, Book

How to determine which evidence-based OCD treatment is the best fit for you. Key points ERP, ACT, and I-CBT are all evidence-based ways to change your relationship with OCD. There isn’t one “right” treatment, there are different ways of approaching OCD. You have options in OCD treatment and can advocate for yourself. Be mindful of not getting into a compulsive loop of picking the "perfect" treatment. If you’ve started exploring therapy for OCD, you’ve likely come across different approaches. There's exposure and response prevention (ERP), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), and inference-based cognitive behavioral therapy (I-CBT), a form of CBT specifically targeting OCD.. For many people, choosing can quickly become overwhelming. It’s also very easy for those with OCD to latch onto the choice process, turning it into another question to focus on: Which one is best? What if I choose the wrong one? What if I waste time? Rather than approach a decision as something to get “right,” it can be more helpful to think of the treatments as different entry points into the same goal: changing your relationship with OCD so that it no longer dictates how you live your life. To make the process feel more approachable, I broke down the top three evidence-based treatments for OCD and how to determine the best fit for you. Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP): Facing Fears Exposure and response prevention (ERP) is the most widely researched and commonly recommended treatment for OCD, with decades of empirical support. During ERP, you intentionally and systematically approach situations, thoughts, images, or sensations that trigger obsessions, whether through in vivo (real-life) exposures, imaginal scripts, or interoceptive exercises, and you practice response prevention by resistance rituals. such as reassurance-seeking, mental reviewing, checking, or avoidance. Over time, the process retrains your brain to learn that distress can rise and fall on its own and that you can tolerate uncertainty and discomfort without seeking relief through compulsions. ERP is helpful if: You feel stuck in compulsive behaviors and rituals You’re constantly seeking certainty, reassurance, or relief You feel that avoidance is shrinking your life You’re ready and willing to practice facing your triggers through exposure work You want to build self-trust in your ability to handle discomfort You learn best through behavioral practices and consistent daily homework. ERP helps retrain the OCD brain by allowing intrusive thoughts and doubt to be present without performing compulsions, which ultimately shows your brain that intrusions are not a threat. Rather than trying to calm yourself down or make the anxiety disappear, you allow the discomfort (e.g., anxiety, doubt, guilt, etc.) to rise and fall on its own. Over time, this creates new learning in the brain: I can experience this, and nothing catastrophic happens, and I can tolerate uncomfortable feelings without solving them. Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT): Psychological Flexibility Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), developed by Steven C. Hayes, offers a different, but highly complementary, perspective. ACT helps you change how you relate to intrusions and emotional discomfort. Through skills like cognitive defusion, mindfulness, and values clarification, you learn to notice thoughts as mental events rather than truths that require engagement. You also learn to tolerate and create distance from anxiety, realizing that you can embrace discomfort while still connecting with what matters to you. ACT is helpful if: You want a treatment that focuses on values and self-compassion You have a difficult time accepting the presence of thoughts and emotional discomfort You would rather focus on exposures that are values-aligned You’re looking to change your relationship with your internal world You need more skills than what ERP offers You learn best through and are open to experiential exercises in sessions. ACT can be especially helpful if you feel entangled with your thoughts, overwhelmed by emotions, or stuck in cycles of trying to “figure out” what these internal experiences mean. ACT shifts the question from Is this thought true? to Is engaging with this thought helping me live the life I want? It also supports the development of psychological flexibility, which often makes it easier to engage in ERP and tolerate discomfort. There is growing evidence supporting ACT as both a stand-alone and adjunctive treatment for OCD. Most clinicians, like myself, will pair ERP and ACT. Inference-Based CBT (I-CBT): Breaking Inferential Confusion Inference-based CBT (I-CBT), developed by Kieron O'Connor and colleagues, takes a different approach by focusing on the reasoning process underlying OCD: inferential confusion. From this perspective, the issue is not simply intrusive thoughts but the way the mind moves away from what is directly observable and into imagined possibilities. OCD becomes fueled by “what if” reasoning that feels compelling, even when it is disconnected from reality-based information. I-CBT is helpful if: You struggle to trust your sense of self and common sense in the here and now You do not want to engage in exposure work You haven’t seen results with other forms of treatment You want to understand how OCD creates doubt in order to step out of the cycle You want to build self-trust using your sensory information as opposed to exposure work You experience taboo themes You learn best through a cognitive model and homework. I-CBT helps you identify when you’ve shifted into the OCD sequence and guides you back toward trusting your direct experience, real self/values, and common-sense reasoning. Rather than engaging with the content of the obsession or repeatedly testing it, the goal is to step out of the reasoning process that gave it power in the first place. Over time, you start to realize right away when OCD shows up and the tricks it's trying to play to pull you into the cycle. This gives you more power and knowledge to disengage from OCD and, ultimately, stop reinforcing symptoms. How to Decide Where to Start? When people ask how to choose between approaches, the answer is not about mixing every model together or trying to collect as many techniques as possible. Each treatment has its own theory of change, and it is important that your therapist is clear on the model they are using and why. ERP and ACT are often used together, as ACT can support willingness, defusion, and values-based action, which makes exposure work more effective. I-CBT, however, is a distinct model with a different understanding of how OCD is maintained, and it is used on its own rather than combined with ERP. While understanding the approaches can be empowering, treatment planning is not something you need to figure out on your own. A trained OCD therapist can help you identify patterns, clarify what is driving your symptoms, and adjust the approach over time. OCD is nuanced, and effective treatment often evolves as new layers of the disorder become more visible. Being Informed Without Turning It into Another Compulsion Learning about treatment can be helpful. It can also, at times, become another situation whereby OCD tries to pull you into certainty-seeking. The goal is not to research until you feel 100% sure or to pick a treatment you think is going to get "rid" of OCD. That is compulsive! Many individuals with OCD treatment-hop, trying to seek relief. I always tell clients to really commit to a treatment protocol before trying something new. You are allowed to ask questions. You are allowed to understand the rationale behind your treatment. You are allowed to share what resonates with you. At the same time, you do not need to pick the “right” treatment in order to begin. You can choose a starting point and adjust as needed. Final Thoughts ERP, ACT, and I-CBT are all defined as evidence-based treatments by The International OCD Foundation. One is not “better” than the other; rather, they’re different ways of helping you relate differently to OCD. The goal is not to find the perfect approach. It is to recognize that you have options and to choose a treatment that resonates with you and how your OCD affects you. From there, the work becomes about engaging in the process with two feet in staying ope, and showing OCD you’re in the driver’s seat! Melissa Jermann, Ph.D.-Blog

Personal Perspective: You’re not letting go of your child—you’re accepting the reality of losing them. Right now, you might not feel like you’re at the beginning of anything, much less the beginning of the rest of your life. After losing a child, it’s not like we can completely start over and pretend that what has happened never happened. We can’t alter the past, but we can change how we choose to move forward. Don’t worry, your grief isn’t going anywhere. Little by little, you’ll learn to absorb it until you forget that it was once a separate entity that scared the hell out of you. You’ve been moving through it at your own speed while putting in the work, and at some point down the road, you’ll wake up and decide it’s finally time to let go. Just to reassure you, you’re not letting go of your child. You’re letting go of the pain and suffering and fully accepting the reality of losing them. Letting go is scary. What if you lose your connection with your kid and no longer miss them? What if it feels like you’ve abandoned them? What if you feel guilty for not feeling sad? What if you fall so far into the grief abyss now that you have nothing to grasp? What actually happens is the opposite of everything you feared. Once you’re able to let go of the agonizing thoughts that you’ve clung to since the day you got the terrible news, you’ll feel stronger—no, it’s more than that; you’ll feel, for the first time in a long time, a sense of freedom and control, which sounds contradictory but no less mind-blowing. Most of all, you’ll feel a different and deeper connection with your child. Strangely, I had a more difficult time letting go of Rob while he was still among us. I was never able to just sit back and wait for him to “bottom out,” and that went double for “Let go, let God” or doing the “detach with love” thing. It all made perfect sense in my head. My head was never the problem. Tough love just never felt right to me—and, yes, I was well aware that was the way it was supposed to feel, but I didn’t care. And neither did my heart. It was my heart that eventually helped me let go of Rob, but my memory is fuzzy, other than it seemed to have crept up on me. I don’t remember the exact time and place when I let go, because I don’t think there was an exact time and place. It was gradual and imperceptible, similar to the way we change while processing our grief. Observing it from a distance now, it looks as though one day I was a heartbroken, sad sack that could barely lace up his sneakers, and the next day I was walking barefoot on the beach with my wife Janie, making plans for dinner. Somewhere between those two days, I let go of the pain in the ass that was Rob in life—as well as the pain in my heart set off by his death. Letting go is just another aspect of grief that you can’t possibly recognize while you’re tumbling around inside the belly of the beast. It was my heart, about a year after Rob died, that also helped me simplify my life by choosing to live in the moment. I no longer looked back, because other than learning from the past (which all of us have endured and then some), it just seemed hollow and pointless. I also stopped future tripping because I had learned—in the hardest way possible—that things tend to unfold in ways that I never could have imagined. Future tripping only triggered feelings of anxiety, which I already had more than my fair share of. How I managed to stop was surprisingly simple. I remember meditating for a short while (for whatever reason, that practice never stuck) and repeating the words, “This is the only moment,” and since then, I’ve been more present and have felt more alive than ever before. This para-Buddhist outlook also informs how I view Rob today. I haven’t and will never let go of him, as you’ll never let go of your child, but I have reworked the way I remember him. I’ve let go of all of his bullsh*t that drove me crazy. I’ve let go of the near–heart attacks I had whenever I saw his name pop up on my iPhone. I’ve let go of being scared of what Rob might do to us, what he might do to someone else, but mostly what he might do to himself. I’ve let go of the version of Rob who made our past tense. At the same time, I’ve let go of Rob’s future. I’ve let go of him calling one day with good news. I’ve let go of seeing him take a five-year chip at an AA meeting. I’ve let go of the fantasy that Rob finally would get himself together, find a good woman, have a bunch of kids, settle down, and live happily ever after. I’ve let go of us growing old together. When I think about Rob today, it’s never about the past or the future. It’s about how I feel about him at this very moment. How much I love him and how much I adore all the good that was inside him. That’s the way I choose to remember him. The best of Rob is all that’s left, and that’s what I hold most dear. Larry Carlat-Blog, Website, Book

How to build identity, environment, and coping skills for lasting recovery. Key points Sobriety reshapes identity, habits, relationships, and environment, not just drinking behavior. People who integrate sobriety into their core identity are more likely to sustain it long term. New coping strategies replace old patterns and support psychological growth beyond abstinence. Interest in sober living has grown steadily over the years. What once carried a clinical label is now a genuine lifestyle choice for a wide range of people. Generation Z is leading a measurable shift away from alcohol, and for those navigating recovery from substance use disorders, the stakes are even higher. According to Gallup, just 54 percent of American adults reported drinking alcohol in 2025—the lowest rate recorded since tracking began in 1939. But numbers only tell part of the story. What actually changes when sobriety becomes part of who you are goes deeper than most people realize, and further than willpower alone can carry anyone. To understand the psychological shifts involved, I interviewed Stephanie Hazard, a certified recovery coach, author of Making Sobriety Stick, and nationally recognized voice in addiction recovery. What she describes is not a story about quitting. It is a story about becoming. Identity First, Then Behavior Most people think of quitting drinking as a behavioral change. But research suggests something deeper is at work. Studies show that when people shift how they see themselves from someone struggling with substance use to someone grounded in recovery, that identity shift is often what makes sobriety last. The difference matters enormously in practice. "When someone is just trying to quit, every hard day feels like a threat. When sobriety is part of who they are, those hard days become part of a larger story they are committed to," Hazard explains. That shift in identity also changes what needs to change around you. Environment Is Not Background Noise Clearing alcohol from the home and restructuring daily space are often framed as logistics. The science suggests they are something more significant. A 2022 meta-analysis found that exposure to drug-related cues more than doubled the odds of relapse. Reducing those cues is not just a good idea; the brain requires it. "You want to start by clearing alcohol out of your home or office environment and stocking up with alternatives," Hazard says. "If you live with others who regularly consume alcohol, it's helpful to ask them to support your decision by moving alcohol so it's not in plain view. Setting boundaries based on respect and mutual understanding is critical for safeguarding your own decision." Sobriety also creates time. Drinking, planning around it, and recovering from it consume more of a week than most people realize. When that space opens up, Hazard encourages people to treat it as an opportunity rather than a void. Not drinking, she says, is "a great opportunity to downshift, making room for a renewed curiosity around what really rings your chimes and what really brings you joy." Simple activities that genuinely bring pleasure build new routines before restlessness fills the gap. But clearing space is only half the work. The harder shift is learning to face what alcohol used to numb. Building New Ways to Cope in Sobriety Alcohol serves a function for many people. It dulls discomfort, lowers anxiety, and offers a reliable way to decompress. When it is removed, those needs do not disappear. They need different answers. Experts found that avoidance coping is a key link between emotional distress and alcohol use, while problem-focused coping, which involves addressing stress directly instead of avoiding it, is associated with lower alcohol use. Over time, naming the stressor, identifying what you can control, and taking action are more effective than avoidance. Hazard notes the right tools are personal. Breathwork, movement, and journaling all show up in what works. The common thread is simple: Stay present with what is hard instead of finding a way around it. Over time, emotions become more visible and more workable. "When you commit to sober living, you get to discover who you really are," Hazard says. "Removing that enables you to be in the world as your true self—and what emerges, gradually, is a clearer sense of identity, values, and what actually brings meaning." Which brings the journey full circle: Sobriety that began as an identity shift becomes the foundation for discovering who that identity really is. Action Steps Here are some action steps to help you move from insight to practice: Assess your readiness honestly: Lasting change starts with an honest look at where you actually are, not where you wish you were. Ask yourself: Am I ready to change, or am I ready to want to change? That distinction is the foundation everything else is built on. Build your recovery capital: The people, routines, and environments around you either support your sobriety or quietly work against it. Identify what helps and invest in it intentionally and deliberately. Audit your environment before cravings do: Remove alcohol from your space, restock with alternatives, and have an honest conversation with the people you live with about what support looks like. This will help reduce exposure to triggers that can quietly pull you back toward old patterns. Move toward discomfort, not away from it: Escaping stress rather than facing it is one of the key pathways linking emotional pain to drinking. Name what is hard, decide what you can control, and act on it. Build community that reflects your new identity: Social circles naturally shift when sobriety becomes part of who you are, and that is realignment, not loss. Accountability partners and alcohol-free relationships do more than offer comfort. They create the kind of structure that actually protects recovery. Bottom Line Sobriety that lasts is rarely just about not drinking. It is about building a life where identity, environment, and emotional resilience work together, making alcohol no longer necessary to cope. That does not happen all at once. It happens one deliberate choice at a time until the person you are becoming feels more like the person you truly are. Ryan C. Warner, Ph.D.-Blog

World Misophonia Awareness Day highlights an under-recognized condition. Key points Misophonia is a condition in which certain trigger sounds, like chewing, produce extreme negative reactions. Spreading awareness about misophonia can help those who experience the condition feel less alone. It can also help everyone to be a better advocate and avoid triggering behaviors. Misophonia is still not a very well known term, despite the substantial prevalence of the condition. Nearly 1 in 20 Americans experiences clinically significant levels of misophonia, yet very few people are aware of the term itself. Misophonia was coined by audiologists Pawel Jastreboff and Margaret Jastreboff in 2001 to refer to a condition distinct from hyperacusis in which people experience extremely negative physical and emotional reactions to certain trigger sounds (such as chewing) and their associated contexts. (See the 2022 consensus definition of misophonia here.) Although every person's experience with misophonia is unique, there are some remarkable commonalities: the most common trigger sounds in misophonia include chewing, sniffling, and other mouth- or nose-related sounds, but they can also include things like finger tapping or other repetitive sounds. In social contexts, these trigger sounds and actions can cause people with misophonia to experience extreme distress, disgust, and very often anger toward the person producing the action. Because these negative reactions are so immediate and intense, they can make it difficult for people with misophonia to cope with common activities like eating with a group of people, and can cause people to withdraw from social life, leading to depression and other mental health disorders. July 9 is World Misophonia Awareness Day, which honors the memory of Michelle Del Valle, a teenager who passed away from suicide in 2023 at the age of 17 after years of suffering with misophonia. There are many good reasons to spread awareness about misophonia today and throughout the year: By spreading awareness, people with misophonia can learn about the condition and realize that they're not alone. Millions of Americans suffer from misophonia, and just knowing that the condition exists can be the first step for people to find resources, support, and community. There is a lot of new research coming out about misophonia, from understanding developmental trajectories and genetic factors to describing cultural differences, neural mechanisms, and novel clinical interventions. Much of this research is published in open-access journals, including this 2023 special issue of Frontiers in Psychology dedicated to describing advances in misophonia research. There are excellent resources out there for people who experience misophonia, including SoQuiet, a nonprofit organization that offers advocacy, support, and resources for people who suffer from misophonia. There are also online communities where people with misophonia can connect, such as the misophonia subreddit. Even if you don't experience misophonia yourself, chances are high that you have loved ones who do. Understanding more about misophonia can make you a better advocate. Learning about the common triggers in misophonia can also make you more attuned to ways that you might minimize your own potentially triggering behaviors (like chewing gum or rustling a bag of chips) when you are with someone with misophonia. Just showing awareness that some of your own behaviors could be triggering can help the person feel understood and supported. There is still a lot of progress to be made in the scientific and clinical efforts to understand misophonia, legitimize its status as a mental health disorder, and develop treatments to help those who live with the condition. In the meantime, spreading awareness is a great way to increase the impact of what we already know. Nicolas Davidenko, Ph.D.-Blog

From skill-building to addressing the deeper emotional needs driving connection. Couples frequently come to session focused on communication tools. They want worksheets, the 'I' statements, active listening scripts, strategic timeouts when conflict escalates, and concrete, actionable steps. They often assume therapy centers on skill-building, arriving ready to practice, prepared to share how their partner has erred, wanting to know what they can do differently, and wanting specific communication and behavior change quickly. It is completely understandable. Tools can feel tangible and concrete. You can write them down on an index card, practice them at home, and feel like you are actively improving your relationship. And still, it is almost entirely backwards. Like Dr. Ryan Rana, EFT trainer, would say, "teaching a couple communication skills before they feel safe with each other is a bit like trying to teach a depressed person to smile." I’m not claiming communication skills are useless by any means. But after over 15 years of sitting with distressed couples, the clinical reality is inescapable: the tool-delivery model has it flipped. The tools, when they work, only work because something much deeper has already happened first. That "something else" is the hard part, and I usually find it cannot be assigned as homework; it must happen live. Because a relationship gets wounded experientially (through experienced conflict followed by inadequate repair), it must be healed experientially (live, in an emotionally experienced and choreographed repair process). Why Tools Fail in the Heat of the Moment Here is the loop I've seen couples hit constantly: They learn a technique like the "softened startup." They practice it in the safety of a calm therapy office and do it reasonably well, sometimes impressively quickly. They might even manage to use it at home a few times while they’re not in heightened conflict. Then, a charged moment hits. Attachment panic flares, and that "fancy" technique evaporates instantly. It’s not a memory failure; it’s a biological one. When our survival brain perceives a threat from our partner, our nervous system undergoes a hostile takeover—morphing into what I think of as an automatic, protective, and almost total myopia. The prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that remembers "I" statements, gets stuck on mute. You cannot think your way into a nervous system that detects a serious, imminent peril. The skill itself requires a foundational baseline of (attachment), a kind of security that the couple often simply does not possess yet. When scripts go out the window, I've seen biology win every time. This is why partners usually communicate much better with other people, such as in their professional contexts, than with their partners, especially when in intense conflict. Research Supports Safety First: The Only Way Tools Actually Work I see this as one of Emotionally Focused Therapy’s (EFT) most critical contributions to modern intimate relationships. Real, lasting change does not happen through reason, lectures, tools, worksheets, or intellectual skill-building. As stated, it happens through continually reinforced live (usually in-session) corrective emotional experiences. As my mentor Dr. Lisa Palmer-Olsen would continually emphasize, long-term changes occur when a therapist can step into partners' crossfire, slow the action down, access the raw, underlying emotions driving their negative dynamic, and help partners express them to each other in new, different, or deeper ways. Beneath partners' screaming and/or icy silence are almost always unmet attachment needs and deep-seated fears of abandonment or inadequacy. When those hidden vulnerabilities are safely exposed, their negative cycle transforms, like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. Partners get to experience a brand-new reality: reaching and being reached for back. This emotional restructuring isn't something you can assign for a Tuesday night at the kitchen table. It happens between partners in real-time, especially with a therapist actively guiding the conditions that make vulnerability safe. The golden rule here is simple: You cannot change core, survival-driven negative emotions with logic. You can only change them by activating a primary, adaptive emotion that restores a sense of bond and safety. The broader efficacy literature supports this. The first comprehensive EFT meta-analysis, Spengler et al. (2024), found that across 20 studies and 332 couples, EFT produced medium to large effects from pretreatment to posttreatment, with 70 percent of couples being symptom-free at the end of treatment, and greater therapist fidelity to the model was associated with better couple results. Fidelity to the model means fidelity to the emotional process, not fidelity to skill, or tool delivery. Similarly, Kula et al. (2023) found that the primary purported change process in EFT for couples involves partners accessing and revealing their underlying vulnerable emotions and responding empathically when their partners disclose theirs. Again, none of this means homework is worthless or that couples should leave sessions and do nothing between them. But the sequencing matters enormously. Skills land when the relational ground beneath them has shifted. The Trap of "Homework-Heavy" Therapy I wrote about EFT in detail in a prior post (Linder, 2020), and in a separate piece on common errors I've seen in student therapists learning EFT (Linder, 2022). One well-meaning mistake I return to with almost every supervisee is the impulse to problem-solve and teach before the emotional work is done. EFT trainees often get frustrated early when their clients aren't opening up vulnerably at the speed they anticipate and push too quickly for depth. Emotional vulnerability and depth aren’t choices. Only when clients feel safe enough (and trust the therapist enough) will they risk opening up on a deeper level. The same thing is true for partners with each other. A common pitfall for clinicians, especially those early in their training, is relying on the (misleading) safety net of assigning tasks, worksheets, practices, and homework (tools). It feels structured to give a couple a worksheet or a communication protocol to try at home before the next session. But if a couple's underlying negative cycle hasn't been de-escalated first, sending a couple home with a script can become a liability. When the tool inevitably fails in the heat of a real argument, the couple doesn't blame the tool; they blame themselves. The risk is that they leave feeling more broken, more hopeless, and convinced that their relationship is uniquely defective. And tragically, they can often believe therapy can’t work for them. The ground must be laid first. The tools don't create safety; it's safety that enables the tools to actually have an effective influence. Once a couple genuinely feels secure, connected, and emotionally attuned, their need for tools, worksheets, and practices will markedly decrease. Jason N. Linder, Psy.D., LMFT-Blog

Approaching a child's gender transition with mindfulness can ease the process. Key points Many parents have trouble when a child decides to transition to a different gender. Children often do not get the support they need from family and community. Mindfulness can help both parents and children accept change. The entire family can benefit from compassion. “What the hell are you doing?” my patient Dan screamed at his 4-year-old son, who was dressed in his wife’s floral apron and twirling a whisk. “I’m cooking, Daddy,” Bobby responded as he started to cry. “I felt like such a jerk,” Dan told me. “I know I’m not the poster child for gentle parenting, and I know I shouldn’t have yelled, but I can’t stand it when he wears his sister’s pink dresses and plays with her dolls. I dreamed of having a child who played football, the way I did, and my father did.” He paused. “He’ll grow out of this, won’t he?” Dan asked in a voice that was almost pleading. For the past 30 years, I’ve worked with parents who have struggled with the gender choices that their children are making. Sometimes they berate themselves, other times they take out their rage on their children. Often, family members compound the guilt and shame. Years ago, it was often unusual for children to want to transition in middle school or high school, but we are now seeing this conversation arise as early as elementary school. I’ve seen this anguish from many perspectives. I trained at a college counseling center in the mid-1980s when gender questioning was uncharted territory, and there was little support for teenagers to come to terms with the complexities of sexual desire that challenged the traditional norms. And the issue of sexuality emerges full force in college when students are away from home and family. But change is not easy for anyone. Eileen, a very polished executive, entered my office and began to sob. She had never lost her composure in our three years of therapy, which focused on her early trauma. “I feel torn between my head and heart, and there is no one to talk to about this.” She explained that Sara, now 14, wanted to be male, and was asking their classmates and teachers to use the name “Sam.” The teachers and other kids were accommodating. However, in Scouts, there was teasing and bullying from other girls. Sara developed an eating disorder. It was hard to get support from family. The grandfather, from a very different generation, could not understand what was happening. “I miss my sweet little girl,” he lamented, causing everyone to cringe. Sara ran to the bathroom to cry and wouldn’t speak to him for months. "I know I’m not supposed to say this, but I had dreams of doing conventional girly things with Sara, like clothes shopping, or going to rom-com movies. Nope. That is not going to happen." After watching the heartache of parents for decades, I have come up with suggestions that have been helpful for many. Don’t Do This Alone. Many parents feel that they have lost a child in this process. They are aware that this isn’t the death of their child, but the child they are now parenting is not who they imagined. Finding others who are struggling in the same way can be comforting, whether it's an online group or chat, or locating support at the local hospital, church, or other place of worship. It is OK to allow yourself to grieve. Give yourself the space to have ambivalent feelings. Learn to Love the Child Who Is Present. Mindfulness has been a major support for the parents (and children) I work with, as change is one of the basic maxims of mindfulness. Can you bring compassion for everyone in the family? Change is a constant, in everything. Watching your child change is part of nature. This change was not anticipated, but then nothing is. And we can’t control our lives, or the lives of our children. This perspective added some comfort as Sara transitioned to Sam, complete with surgery and hormones. What was especially helpful for Eileen was that Sam didn’t seem so “tortured” as she put it. They are finding increased comfort in being in their body. “Mom,” Sam commented, “this is who I am supposed to be. I like who I am.” They had always been interested in music, studying piano, singing, and guitar when young. But now, as Sam, they could find a new sound. “I’m finding I like this new voice,” Eileen commented. The lyrics are edgy, the beat is strong, and the music is fresh and new. Sam and his band have developed a following, and a recording label is talking about a deal. It has been a huge change for all of us, but we have worked together to find our way. It is not what I wanted, but I find that we all have become more resilient. Susan M. Pollak, MTS, Ed.D.-Blog

Healing happens when you get out of the way of your nervous system. Key points Thoughts interpret our physiology and are driven by it. Stress physiology creates unpleasant thoughts. Modern self-help processes are ineffective because they keep the body attentive to threat. By calming down and nurturing safety physiology, your body heals on its own. Quit fighting your thoughts; instead, nurture joy. Like the caterpillar, you will wonderfully emerge. The harder you fight your unwanted thoughts, the louder they get. Neuroscience shows us alternatives. Let your body do what it knows how to do – heal. Journalist Benoit Denizet-Lewis1 recently ended a New York Times essay on self-transformation with a cartoon: a butterfly peering down at a caterpillar, dispensing advice with the easy authority of someone who has only recently sprouted wings. "The thing is," the butterfly says, "you have to really want to change." The joke, as Denizet-Lewis points out, is obvious. The caterpillar's transformation has nothing to do with wanting. It becomes what it becomes. Another way to put it is that your body knows how to heal if you can learn to get out of the way. After more than three decades as a spine surgeon, I have watched this same paradox destroy people's chances of getting better. Not because they didn't try hard enough — but because they tried too hard, in exactly the wrong direction. The Invisible Trap Most people I see with chronic mental and physical pain are fighters. They are not passive; they analyze their thoughts, suppress the worst ones, read every book, and try every modality. They do everything the self-improvement industry tells them to do—and they get worse. During the darkest phase of my personal ordeal with pain, I was an “epiphany addict”, on a relentless search for an answer. Only after I was completely broken to the point of suicide did I let go, and I began to heal. You don’t have to endure such a level of suffering to transform, and I have witnessed hundreds of patients experience deep healing, with much less angst. There is no mystery to it; a physiological mechanism is at work. Your body breaks down under sustained stress; it repairs and regenerates only when we feel safe. Constantly searching for a fix and being disappointed doesn’t make you feel safe. Research consistently shows that pursuing happiness produces sadness.2 The more deliberately we chase a positive state, the more the brain scans for the gap between where we are and where we want to be. That scanning is a threat signal. And a nervous system locked in a state of threat cannot heal. The self-help industry rests on the premise that transformation is a product of will — that with the right techniques, enough effort, and sufficient self-awareness, you can think your way to a better life. But that premise misunderstands the most basic fact of human biology: Your body is not waiting for your permission to heal. It is waiting for safety. The Hornet's Nest Think of your brain and nervous system as a hornet's nest. The anxiety, anger, shame spirals, and repetitive unwanted thoughts (RUTs)that keep you awake at 3 a.m. are the hornets. They are automatic survival signals generated by your nervous system, doing exactly what it was designed to do: alert you to a threat. The problem begins when you treat the signals as the problem. Every attempt to suppress, analyze, argue with, or medicate those thoughts sets the hornets off. The hornets become more agitated and swarm. The nervous system registers that reaction as a new threat, generating more signals that provoke further reactions. Talk therapy rehearses the content of unpleasant thoughts. Interventions that urge the hornets to calm down and go back into the nest won’t work. The real answer lies in not continuing to shake the nest. Then the hornets are able to quiet down and re-enter their home. Well-meaning, conscientious people often struggle more with RUTs than others. They care deeply about being well, so they fight harder when the alarm sounds. But fighting the alarm is not the same as addressing the fire. What the Body Already Knows From more than 15 years spent in the abyss of anxiety, anger, and severe obsessive thinking, I learned that the body (including your brain) already knows how to heal. It always has. The human organism regenerates and repairs constantly—but only when it is in a state of safety long enough to do so. There is always some degree of remaining on alert. The nervous system is always engaged in a continuous, largely unconscious scan of the environment for cues of danger or safety3, a process Dr. Stephen Porges, developer of polyvagal theory, dubbed neuroception. When neuroception detects a threat, the body mobilizes. Stress hormones and inflammatory molecules flood the system, stimulating inflammation, to defend against the possibility of infection. Blood flow shifts toward muscles. The thinking brain narrows. This is threat physiology—and it is incompatible with healing. When neuroception registers safety, the opposite occurs. Defensive tone subsides. Blood flows back to the brain's prefrontal cortex. Neuroplasticity—the brain's capacity to physically rewire itself—becomes possible. Healing then happens—not as an act of will but as an emergence. The body does what it was always capable of doing once it is exposed to the right conditions. I watched this in my clinic. Patients who had been in intractable pain for years, who had tried every intervention, would often become symptom-free—not after a new surgery or a better medication but after learning to stop generating threat signals and to start engendering cues of safety. In the most practical sense, they stopped shaking the nest. From Reactive to Creative The shift required is not passive. It is not resignation. It is something more precise: redirecting attention away from the problem and toward the life you want. Neuroplasticity works in both directions. Your brain develops where your attention goes. If your attention is on the symptoms—analyzing, fearing, and fighting them—your neural circuitry deepens around them. The RUTs get deeper. But when you deliberately choose connection, curiosity, creativity, and joy, new circuits form. The old reactive pathways atrophy from disuse. This is not positive thinking. It is biology. The brain you have tomorrow is shaped by what you focus on today. It is formed by repeatedly m aking positive choices. This concept has existed for millennia. Stoic thinking 2,000 years ago is an example.4 Notice what this means in practice: Healing is not a subtraction. You do not get better by removing the bad. You heal by building something else—and by allowing the nervous system to slowly and repeatedly register that the nest is no longer being shaken. The Caterpillar's Lesson The caterpillar does not think its way into becoming a butterfly. It does not try harder. It does not attend more workshops or optimize its transformation strategy. It surrenders to a process already underway, one that was always going to happen under the right conditions. This is what I want patients to understand, and what the self-improvement industry cannot afford to tell them: You cannot fix yourself. But you can create the conditions for your body to heal. Give up fighting the darkness. Turn on the lights. The caterpillar becomes what it will become depending on the dominant state of threat or safety. You must learn to find the switch. David Hanscom, MD-Blog

Current messaging about productivity is worsening burnout for many people. Key points "Hustle culture" makes an already-complicated daily existence busier and less open to mindfulness. Current social media trends promote an unhealthy attachment to productivity. Longstanding norms of hyper-productivity are leading to increased rates of burnout. The irony should not be lost on us: optimizing and maximizing, two words we are hearing more and more in the current life-advice social media zeitgeist, are actually resulting in exhaustion and burnout, virtually defeating their intended purpose of increasing productivity and reaching a state of ultimate effectiveness. From “wellnessmaxxing,” the idea of optimizing self-care, to “biohacking,” the idea of intervening in natural bodily functions (such as sleep) to “hack” or maximize physical functioning, to “habit stacking,” the idea of adding a new habit to an already established one, there are a multitude of buzzy, trendy ways to reach optimal daily functioning. And these trends are to say nothing about longer-standing problematic optimization standards like blurry work boundaries and constant digital connectivity. How 'Hustle Culture' Adds Stress Instead of Relief While we may, in fact, be living in a time of unprecedented daily optimization, the downside of this “hustle culture” is that it can make an already complicated, overwhelming, and stressful daily existence even busier, more outcome-oriented, and less open to mindfulness and presence. American workforce burnout reached an all-time high with nearly 72 percent of U.S. workers reporting moderate to severe levels of workplace burnout in 2025 (Mohr et al., 2025). Three out of every four Americans are feeling tired, overburdened, stretched thin, and burnt out. Our relationships with our jobs are part of the problem, but we might argue that another part is the overarching messaging of “hustle,” “optimize,” “be productive,” and “maximize” that we hear daily, both directly and indirectly. Repeated often enough, a message can be accepted and go unchallenged. But, for the sake of our collective mental health, the message of hyper-productivity that has long been perpetuated by American culture must be challenged and changed. Historical Roots In psychological circles, we might trace some of this messaging back to the early self-improvement literature, which offered titles such as The Laws of Success, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Think and Grow Rich, and The Master Key System. These titles were early precursors to the current culture of optimization—here is how to win, get rich, and be successful. The content of these books was rarely based on psychological theory, and often provided dubious, albeit bestselling blueprints for quick maximization. Social Media and the Unending Push for Life Hacks Many of the most popular optimization-based TikTok reels sound eerily similar to these old book titles: “How to Stop Procrastinating in Two Minutes,” “How to Reset Your Brain,” “How to Win Every Day,” “Leverage Your Mind.” The overarching message is the same: You can hack life by learning how to optimize your existence. This, however, comes with an unspoken caveat: We must be constantly training our brains, learning new hacks, and unlocking new shortcuts—rather than simply living our lives, we are forever striving to make them better, easier, more comfortable, and more monetarily sustainable. Healthy Self-Improvement From Craving-Based Striving Let me make an important distinction: Aiming to improve our lives is, of course, not an inherently bad thing and is, indeed, much of what is focused on in the therapy room. There are healthy, adaptive, and psychologically based ways to do this. The problem is that our culture of optimization presents the goal of improvement as a constant striving. Buddhist tenets present an important differentiation between striving that is based on craving and striving that is based on “right effort.” Craving-based striving might be doing something in order to achieve more status, whereas “right effort” striving might be doing something for our long-term betterment or health (Bodhi, 1994). Unfortunately, many of the optimization and maximization reels that are popular on social media platforms are undeniably craving-based, to wit: “How to Win Every Day.” The Buddhists would argue that craving leads to suffering, and one of the types of suffering we face in our modern world comes in the form of burnout. The Need for Mindfulness Amidst Hustle Culture In my clinical practice, I find myself talking more and more about mindfulness and slowing down. So many clients I see report feeling overwhelmed, burned out, and exhausted by the constant hustle and striving that has become the norm in our society. External messages have a lot of power to influence how we conduct our lives and what habits we adopt. It is important to be willing to challenge some of these messages, particularly those that lead us to negative states like burnout. It is human nature to desire improvement and to want to better our circumstances, but the way we go about trying to achieve this dictates whether it helps or hurts us. Our current culture of optimization is accomplishing the opposite of its intended purpose: Rather than making our lives easier, it is adding more to our plates, which statistics show are already overfilled. Phil Lane, MSW, LCSW- Blog

Kids with chores tend to be more independent, feel happier, and do better. Key points We're in the midst of a worsening crisis in teens' mental health. Public policy and school changes can help, but parents can also use chores to support their troubled kids. Kids who do chores at home tend to be happier, healthier, and more successful at school and beyond. Parents of troubled kids should start small, emphasize the positive, and stay on top of chore completion. There is so much going on for kids as they enter adolescence, starting at age ten or 11 and persisting for the next several years. Their bodies, brains, and place in the world are changing dramatically and quickly. That’s always been true. But today, there are signs that more young people than ever are having increasingly serious social, emotional, and behavioral problems. Arguably, the best way to address these problems is to reduce the stressors kids are increasingly experiencing. That may mean refocusing public policy by investing in social justice, environmental health, and educational equity. On a slightly smaller scale, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control provides recommendations for schools to increase kids’ mental health and resiliency by acquiring mindfulness skills, social skills, emotional awareness, and connectedness. Household Chores: A Vehicle for Connection and Healing It’s great when you get involved in changing public policy or work to change school culture, but in the meantime, you need to address your immediate concerns about your child’s social, emotional, and behavioral development. Sometimes that means getting professional help, but that isn’t usually enough on its own. Troubled tweens and teens often feel disconnected, powerless, and confused about their place in a problem-filled world. Household chores can be a vehicle for increasing your child’s sense of importance in the family, giving them feelings of accomplishment, connection, and value that carry over into other dimensions of their life. Research finds that kids with chores tend to do better than others in a whole lot of important ways. On average, they are happier, healthier, and more successful at school, with friends, and in general. They tend to feel better about themselves and are more connected to their family. So if your tween or teen is difficult or troubled, think seriously about giving them chores. You’ll both benefit. Expect Pushback When Chores Start If your child has reached the age of 8 or so without being responsible for much in the way of household chores, they will almost certainly whine, complain, argue, and explain that they’re far too tired, busy, or otherwise occupied. As far as your adolescent child is concerned, chores are hated for three main reasons: you’re telling them what to do; the chores look like work, not fun; and they see chore-time as a loss of their personal freedom. But that doesn’t mean chores aren’t good for them. They are. Getting Started: How to Implement a Chore Habit Step by Step Explain what you’re doing. When you and your child are both in a good mental space (good-humored, not rushing, no screens), sit down together. Explain that you love them and want to give them the life skills and habits that will serve them well once they’re living on their own. And also, now that they’re 10, 12, or 15 years old, they’re mature enough to contribute to running the household. Make the list. Together—with your child providing most of the suggestions if possible—list all the chores that need to be thought about daily: dishes, table-setting, laundry, bathrooms, sweeping floors, walking the dog, making the next day’s lunches, taking out the garbage, etc. Save the list. You’ll come back to it in a month. Choose one. Ask your child to choose their favorite item on the list, the one chore they’d most like to take responsibility for. Discuss carrots and sticks. What should your child get for successful completion of their daily chore? Maybe points in a point system that’s tied to allowance? Maybe increased screen time? What consequence makes sense for omitting to complete the chore? Maybe loss of points or loss of screen time? Make specific plans for doing the chore. Ask your child to describe how and when they plan to complete their chore. Be patient, respectful, and definite that the how and when have to meet your specifications. For example, if they choose table-setting, that might include putting away anything that’s on the table; setting each place with cutlery, napkin, and a drinking glass; and checking to make sure the table looks welcoming. And it needs to be done by a set time, say 6 pm. Emphasize the positive. As your child gets started on a new chore, praise what they get right and help them do better next time. Don’t criticize or micromanage. Be flexible. Negotiate changes as needed. Let your child swap chores with you or other members of the family. Notice and be grateful. Thank your child for their contribution, and point out how what they’re doing is helping everyone in the family. Stay on top of it. This is why you haven’t implemented chores earlier. It really is an annoying, time-consuming hassle to supervise a resistant child as they acquire the habit of contributing to the family. But, like putting money aside in a savings account, it’s very much worth doing. You’d rather spend your time and energy elsewhere, but someday you and your child will be glad you invested in giving your child the habit of taking responsibility for chores. Have a one-month check-in. One month later—to the day, if you can make that happen—sit down with your child again, this time with snacks. Discuss the implementation process of the first chore. What went well? What obstacles did either one of you experience? Choose the next chore. Review the list. What other chores should be added? Ask the child what their next most favorite (least despised) chore is. Discuss the practical details of how and when to do it. If one or both of you have been slack about doing or monitoring Chore #1, then you need to get better at the chore habit. Continue with Chore #1 and delay implementation of Chore #2 until the following month. Although your troubled adolescent might be working hard to push you away and resist your demands, they urgently need to feel loved, respected, and valued by you. As counterintuitive as it might seem, giving them chores and insisting they be completed can help make that happen. Dona Matthews, Ph.D.- Blog, Book

Your relationship struggles may be tied to the stories you tell yourself. Key points The signal is the emotions and physiology you experience when you perceive a situation as a threat. The story is what you tell yourself to reduce uncertainty, even if the story is more painful. Focus on the signal and avoid telling the story to help change how you handle life situations. How often have you heard this from people explaining their relationship challenges: “I have anxious attachment?” Attachment theory has become part of what I call the “Relationship-Industrial Complex” and is an essential term in our relationship vocabulary. It suggests that relationships demonstrate one of three patterns: anxious, avoidant, or secure. It’s used as both an explanation and an excuse for struggling relationships and other difficulties we often face in our lives. And sometimes it’s accurate; many people do experience anxious attachment in even the most loving relationships. But just as often, what people are experiencing isn’t that readily explainable because attachment isn’t a dichotomous style (or a label); rather, it lies along a continuum of how we connect with others. And one location along that spectrum is what I call “signal/story attachment.” It is a very human process in which the mind confuses two different internal experiences: signal and story. Understanding the difference can immediately reduce distress and improve how you respond to difficult relationship moments. Signal: What Is Real and Immediate When something unsettling happens, your body reacts first. A delayed text. A change in tone. A moment of distance. Your nervous system registers a potential threat. This is not pathology. It’s basic biology. It’s your survival instinct kicking in. Emotions such as anxiety, sadness, frustration, or anger are signals that something meaningful is happening. From an evolutionary perspective, these emotional responses are designed to orient you toward potential threats and mobilize attention and action to remove the threat. The key point is this: The signal is tied to the present moment. It reflects what is happening right now and how your system is interpreting it. Though a clearly unpleasant emotional and physiological experience, it is nonetheless normal, healthy, and often positive information that you should listen to. The Purpose of the Signal Emotional signals are not problems to eliminate. They serve specific, important functions. They invite awareness. Emotions direct your attention toward something that matters. They slow you down. When you feel something strongly, your system is trying to interrupt automatic or impulsive behavior. They prompt care. Signals often indicate a need for support, patience, or self-regulation. Research on emotion regulation consistently shows that acknowledging emotions, rather than suppressing them, leads to better psychological outcomes. In short, the signal is an ally that should be attended to, not the enemy that should be avoided at all costs. The problem is that when we feel some sort of pain, including emotional pain, our evolutionarily developed reaction is to do everything we can to not feel that pain. That’s where the story comes in. The Story: What the Mind Adds Very quickly, the mind begins to interpret the signal. It creates a story around that signal with the intention of easing our pain. “I’m screwed.” “I’ll never be successful.” “They’re losing interest.” “I’m falling behind everyone else.” “I don’t know who I am without this.” “They’ll come back to me, I’m sure of it.” “I’ll show them!” These are the stories we tell ourselves. Some are short stories, even one-liners. Other stories are elaborate fantasies that extend far into the future. Some are incredibly negative, simply affirming definitively what we believe in the moment. Other stories are the exact opposite. They are triumphal tales of the relationship working out, getting the job in the end, or getting a better one. Unfortunately, though these stories provide temporary emotional relief, they make things worse in the end because they anesthetize us against the signals we don’t want to, but really need to, listen to. The story is not the event itself. It is the meaning you assign to the event. And the mind is wired to generate meaning rapidly, often with incomplete information. From a cognitive perspective, this reflects automatic thought patterns and predictive processing. The brain is constantly trying to reduce uncertainty by constructing narratives about what is happening and what will happen next. How the Story Amplifies Suffering The real pain is not the initial emotional signal (though it is certainly unpleasant). It is what the story does to it; the story intensifies the signal. It stretches a present-moment reaction into an imagined catastrophic future. It converts uncertainty into painful certainty. The paradox here is that, from an evolutionary perspective, we would rather know that something bad is going to happen than not know what the future portends. Most importantly, it shifts the threat from the situation to the self. A delayed reply becomes “I’m not wanted.” A setback becomes “I’m a failure.” This shift is critical. What began as a manageable emotional response to an immediate concern becomes a broader psychological threat to our very value as people. This pattern aligns with what cognitive models describe as catastrophizing and overgeneralization, both of which are strongly associated with anxiety and distress. Separating Signal From Story The goal is not to eliminate the emotions in any particular moment. It is to separate the signal from the story. Start by allowing the emotional signal without resistance. If you feel anxious, acknowledge that anxiety is present. Then notice when your thinking shifts from what hurts (the signal) to what it means (the story). That transition is the moment where signal becomes story. It’s also the moment when the pain of the situation becomes the excruciating pain of self-judgment and failure. Even when the story feels helpful or protective (yes, it does dull the pain in the short term), it often adds unnecessary suffering in the long run. Instead of resolving uncertainty, it ultimately amplifies it. And, in doing so, the “volume” of the pain gets much louder too. Grounding Back in the Signal A more effective response is to return to what is real, present, and actionable. In other words, what you are feeling in the moment (the signal). Name the emotion without interpretation: “This is anxiety.” “This is sadness.” Acknowledge that it hurts, but also realize that it will pass if you allow it to. Bring your attention back to what you can control now, for example, work, family and friends, self-care. When you feel the pull toward telling a story, remind yourself that a story will only make it worse. Now, here’s the hard part. Choose not to tell yourself the story. Redirect your attention, immerse your mind in something (e.g., a book, music, time with friends, exercise), or do something you enjoy. All of these not only distract you from creating a story, but they also generate positive emotions and physiology that ease the signal. Overall, let the larger meaning of the current situation reveal itself over time, rather than constructing a narrative prematurely that will likely not turn out to be true. This approach is consistent with mindfulness-based interventions, which emphasize present-moment awareness and nonjudgmental observation of thoughts and emotions. A Different Way to Understand Yourself Before concluding that something is fundamentally wrong with you and assigning a label, anxious attachment, that may not accurately reflect your state of mind, consider a simpler explanation: Maybe you don’t have anxious attachment. As a result, you aren’t doomed to a life of loneliness (talk about catastrophizing!). You may simply be experiencing a normal emotional signal that you are in a situation that isn’t healthy for you (no matter how much you wish it were otherwise) and then telling yourself a story that will make things much harder than they are now. If you stop the story, you not only ease your pain, but you also begin to rewire your brain so that, with enough practice, you no longer have to resist telling yourself a story, but rather can just sit with the signal until it passes (and I assure you it will). Learning to distinguish between signal and story doesn’t eliminate emotional pain or failed relationships. But it prevents you from adding insult to injury in an already challenging moment. And, in some cases, it also may just salvage the situation you are in or enable you to move on more quickly to a life situation that is healthy and fulfilling. And that shift alone can change how you experience relationships, performance, and life. Jim Taylor, Ph.D.-Blog, Book