Most people think music is entertainment. It is not. Music is the nervous system’s favorite loophole. It gets past defenses that would slam shut if a therapist, partner, or friend gently said, Maybe you should talk about why you melted down in the Trader Joe’s parking lot.Music hits before meaning. A chord progression goes straight...
I have lost count of how many times someone has asked me,“What do you think about this because you’re a psychiatrist?”1 Or, “Are you analyzing me right now?”2 Or my personal favorite, whispered like I’m scanning their soul with airport security equipment, “You people frighten me.”3 People imagine psychiatrists diagnosing strangers the way botanists identify...
If you’ve been online for more than 11 seconds, you may have noticed that everyone now thinks they have ADHD.Everyone: Your friend, your cousin, the barista with the septum ring, the dog-walker with a PhD in crystals from Naropa, the guy on TikTok whose entire personality is “neurodivergent aesthetic,” and your coworker whose main symptom...
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,...
Welcome to 2026, a time when everyone is arguing about vaccines, autism, public health, and reality itself, often with the expertise of a raccoon who once ate a medical textbook.There is a new culture war in America, and it is not subtle. It is not soft. It is not gentle. It is wrapped in health...
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...
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