Category: Anxiety and stress
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You cannot reframe your way out of a filing cabinet
Two rats get identical shocks. One has a wheel that works. Weeks later only one of them is broken, and the difference was never mindset. What the controllability literature says about surviving an institution that will not answer you, and why reframing is the wrong target
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The colours of noise: sorting real science from wellness-industry hiss
White noise, pink noise, brown, green — the wellness aisle has worked out how to sell you silence by the colour, with a subscription. Some of it is real. Most of it isn’t what the label claims. A counselling psychologist sorts the four into their proper boxes
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The gut punch is real. The manual just hasn’t caught up.
The gut punch of rejection is real: your brain files it under bodily injury, not bad mood. But ‘RSD’ is a clinical coinage the literature hasn’t ratified yet, and that gap says more about psychiatry’s slow paperwork than about anything broken in you
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It wasn’t the last straw
The straw never breaks the camel’s back. The load does. The straw just arrives last and gets the blame. I wrote about my own collapse this week—a full-blown panic attack—and why veteran PTSD, autistic burnout and perimenopause turn out to be the same story wearing different clothes: accumulation, with no recovery in between. The science…
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The blazer is doing more work than you think
A few days ago I read a piece by Lindsey Mackereth called “Perfectionism Is Just RSD in a Blazer,” and it has been bothering me in the good way ever since. She’s mostly right. She also stops short of where the argument actually goes.
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The body keeps the invoice
The universe spent 13.8 billion years producing a nervous system capable of abstract thought, and you’ve spent the last forty years running it on emergency power. The research says the invoice can start being paid down. Here’s what actually works
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Message to Neil
If this letter landed somewhere familiar, you’re not alone. One-way friendships drain neurodivergent people faster than most. Subscribe to my Substack channel for writing that names the things polite society pretends not to notice, from a psychologist who has stopped pretending
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Why the monster myth is the most dangerous idea in child protection
If you’ve ever wondered why decades of prosecution, rescue operations, and awareness campaigns haven’t reduced the sexual exploitation of children, The Convenient Monster argues the answer is uncomfortable, systemic, and closer to home than anyone wants to admit
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Your body has been writing you letters for years. You just couldn’t read them
If decades of masking and the invisible weight of long COVID have left your body keeping a score nobody told you about, you are not imagining it. Lee Hopkins is a psychologist and late-diagnosed AuDHD adult who understands what you are going through from the inside out
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When the body keeps the score of a lifetime of masking
Chronic physical pain can emerge after years of neurodivergent masking because the nervous system and body absorb prolonged stress responses. When identity strain, social pressure and self-criticism accumulate over decades, the body may eventually signal overload through fatigue, tension and pain
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When a messaging app becomes a diagnostic tool
Had enough of dietary evangelists diagnosing your health problems through Instagram? Share this with anyone who’s tired of being lectured about their “systematic abuse” of their body by amateur nutritionists with messiah complexes
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Misdiagnosis nearly killed me
A personal and clinical account of misdiagnosis, neurodivergence, environment, and augmentation. Three books form one argument: mental health fails when behaviour is mistaken for architecture, context is ignored, and clinicians lose the bandwidth to remain curious
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Doing less without disappearing
Living with an ADHD and autistic brain often means having more ideas than energy This reflective essay explores why doing less is not failure but a necessary response to nervous system depletion burnout and the quiet work of recovery in a culture addicted to productivity
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Have you tortured someone today?
One in four of us don’t ‘fit in’. This leads to tremendous psychological pain as we deal with the pain of rejection and the fear of being ostracised. Have you unwittingly tortured your friend today?
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Rebuilding identity without consensus
When shared reality fractures, identity can feel unmoored. This piece explores how to rebuild psychological coherence without agreement, protect curiosity without overexposure, and remain grounded in how you think rather than who agrees with you
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When conversation disappears, grief follows
This piece explores the quiet grief that follows the loss of meaningful conversation, how identity is affected when reflection disappears, and why exhaustion, withdrawal, and sadness are often signs of unrecognised relational loss rather than cynicism or burnout
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Why some conversations now feel impossible
If conversations leave you exhausted rather than understood, this piece explores the psychology behind why dialogue collapses when belief fuses with identity, and how to recognise when shared understanding is no longer available without blaming yourself or others
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Steve Davis on social media’s fall
Now that Australia has passed the world’s first law on social media and teens, over a decade after it was first realised how dangerous Meta/Facebook/Instagram are to mental health, Steve Davis reflects…
