If you have ever wondered why everyone looks like a zombie who overslept the apocalypse, it is because sleep is basically extinct. Insomnia is now so universal that when a patient tells me, “Oh, I sleep great,” I immediately assume they are lying, enlightened, or possessed1. Humans used to sleep in two peaceful chunks surrounded...

“Baseball is a gentle game. Football is war.”1George Carlin (comedian, pointing out that two things can look totally different and still be the same category)Exactly like ADHD and Autism Spectrum Disorder. Football and baseball: both sports which involve a ball. ADHD and ASD: both neurodivergent. They just behave like they were coded by different interns....

Most of us do not listen to songs. We inhale them. They move through us like weather fronts. A chord progression hits your chest, your eyes leak for no reason, and you think, “Wow, nostalgia.” Except it is not nostalgia. It is your brain being hacked by someone else’s unresolved emotional catastrophe.If you have ever...

If you want to watch a grown adult malfunction in real time, don’t show them quantum physics. Just mention pronouns. Suddenly, people who haven’t opened a biology textbook since eighth grade start screaming about chromosomes in Target. They insist that trans identity is a trend, a contagion, or society collapsing. Meanwhile, every major medical, psychological,...

Before You Diagnose Yourself, Diagnose the Country People keep walking into psychiatric offices saying, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” as if their brain spontaneously malfunctioned. A real issue for most people is not internal. It is environmental. We are living in a country where the emotional climate feels like a smoke alarm that...

Before help even begins, I often hear it: “We’re against meds.” It’s usually said with the same tone people use for “We don’t talk about the war.” I get it. No one wants to believe their brain might need something their willpower can’t fix. This morning, before I even met with a new patient, her...

Before a full-blown illness moves in and starts eating all your snacks, your brain and body usually give you some warning signs. They’re not dramatic. No violins. No flashing lights. Just little red flags waving while you say, “I’m fine, just tired.” Spoiler: you’re probably not fine. Let’s talk about those warnings: the mental ones,...

INTRODUCTION: Anxiety Is the National Mood (and the Default Setting) If aliens landed tomorrow and asked, “Take me to your calmest human,” we would have nothing to offer them except a barista on break who briefly forgot they had student loans. People say things like: “I work well under pressure.” “I am just busy.” “I...

December has two settings: Hallmark Movie Fantasy Emotional Hunger Games Every year, approximately 0% of humans experience the first one. We watch Christmas specials where beautiful people find love in four minutes, snow behaves like a mood stabilizer, and nobody has relatives. Meanwhile, the average adult spends December running six competing emotion programs on one...