Latest Stories
Most recently published stories in Psyche.
Gentleman
Hold the door, offer your jacket, say please and thank you, buy her flowers. Put a napkin on your lap, never eat the last slice of cake, know the difference between your soup spoon and dessert spoon. Never ask a woman her age. Don’t just ask how her day was, listen to what she says. Give up your seat on the metro, treat those in the service industry with respect and dignity, walk her home, never leave the party without thanking the host.
By Shawn Daring5 years ago in Psyche
Does an 'influencer' do more harm than good?
The phrase 'social media is fake' is tossed around so often that it has become a cliché amongst the 'influencer' community. The importance of self-love and self-care is brandished in a sparkly filter and edited to make the 'influencer' look more aesthetically pleasing and so, undermines and contradicts the actual message they are advertising. The irony being that 'social media is fake' - and that is all of it. Every. Single. Thing. This is what many young people do not understand. When your favourite 'influencer' is talking about self-love in front of a filter to make their waist look smaller on a video, they are being fake as well. They are promoting the idea of self-love from a place of great narcissism and bad intentions. Why? So that you do not use said filters and editing to make yourself look a certain way, but they continue to. Again, why? Well, because they want to make themselves feel like they are better than everyone else and because of the vapid nature of an 'influencer' - they focus purely on the appearance and nothing else. Intelligence, personality and personal qualities do not matter to them. If they can feel like their appearance is better than yours then they will promote this in any way possible. It is a senseless and sociopathic act of narcissism.
By Annie Kapur5 years ago in Psyche
How Playing Like A Kid Helped Me Manage My Anxiety
I had never really heard of or thought about the idea that playing with kid's games could help reduce anxiety. I was always under the impression that you just needed to think differently about your problems, and everything would be OK.
By Elena Athon5 years ago in Psyche
Inside
Inside ~ By : J Tales are something parents tell their kids so they sleep better at night. Peaceful and Enchanting dreams created by the fairytales of their favorite superheroes or who they admire most in the world. To avoid the darkness and fearful nightmares of reality hidden beneath the surface. Lights grants truth and the truth brings peace. How long before those fairytales become lies? Well this story however is not a fairytale but it is the deepest part of your mind. Emma lays awake at night hoping and praying her mind’s eye is just an illusion. Inside the shadows there is a light in the distance pulling Emma and longing for her to reach it. The darkness that surrounds Emma to the point she hears nothing but the sound of her own thoughts at night. Asking herself “what’s wrong with me?” Over and over again never coming up with an answer for hope. “Faith” she whispered to herself, “I have to believe in faith” but is that all she can wish for. A shiny star in the sky, A last glimmer of hope and freedom. Is faith really all there is for an answer? With her hands over her head and pacing back and forth until she falls to her knees and Just cries. Crying for hours of the night til falling asleep to wake up to the sunlight hitting her face. She has to put a smile on her face and pick out an extraordinary outfit to start the day. Covering her wore out eyes from crying all night with makeup. Emma’s mind pushes back all the bad and focused a smile on her face for the entire day just waiting to go home and suffer in silence. “Another day....” she said as she walks into the whole slowly breaking inside but holding up a strong front to hide herself from showing she’s breaking inside. After a long Emma comes home and it’s filled with silence again so she turns on the music to surround the room with noise. After awhile of sitting with so much noise in the room it becomes not enough the thoughts in her head drown out the noise. So she finally stands up and walks in her bathroom and grabs pills. She takes a few with some liquor. “I can’t do it anymore” she cries. She turns the music off and goes to lay down but her body is so weak. Emma lost all hope the moment she took those pills. Everything in her body screams to die, that her only peace is death. As her eyes closing slowly she can hear footsteps but can’t make a face it’s all a blur. As she’s embraces her faith and ready to go into an eternal deep sleep and she slips into the darkness of her mind spiraling down memories. She remembers the coldness and loneliness of when she was raped for the first time as a child. Men coming into her room as she was sleeping putting their hands around her neck so she couldn’t scream as one man rips her clothes and the others hold her down from struggling. Her eyes start to blur in and out of focus as if she was going to die but before she lost all vision she could see the man’s face. With a slightly shaved beard and dark hair and eyes of coldness as he took off her pants and forced himself upon her. The face she saw, the face she loved so dearly once before .... was her own father.
By Justis Thomas5 years ago in Psyche
On Mind Serving the Wrong Master
Please take this with a sense of humor, but being human is not always a walk in the park. At the risk of sounding dramatic and pessimistic, so many people chew on their internal psychological suffering like they chew on a piece of gum; and do so without noticing it. No wonder we see layer upon layer of denial and narcotic cover-ups.
By Eric Stone5 years ago in Psyche
Meditative Art
After a series of unfortunate events, I had a rapid spiritual awakening forced upon me back in the fall of 2020. I didn’t realize what was happening to me, and went through the whole fuckin’ thing by myself which resulted in me losing all my friends due to scaring the shit out of them, dropped 15 pounds from anorexia, got escorted to the psych ward where I would have been diagnosed with all kinds of fancy psychosis labels had I gone (I chose not to), and I got exiled from my family for a hot second. I trained wrecked my entire life in roughly three months in every single aspect of my life. Quit my job, maxed out all my credit cards, my love life got incinerated, the whole nine. I call it my mental health holiday. It all sounds absolutely terrible, and it was half magical and half wretched at the same time. The wretched part was having every single trauma I’ve ever suffered come roaring to the surface which basically was like a mirror shattering event for me. It felt like I went through all kinds of fun deaths, had a ton of out of body experiences, and I blasted open all of my chakras which had my ass hallucinating and searching through every crack and crevice trying to find the answer to the meaning of life. FYI: I highly recommend following instructions and unblocking the root chakra first and not your third eye and crown chakras. Trust me. The ground is your friend. I learned this after becoming one with the clouds for an extended period of time. It took a long time to balance them all (there’s 7 chakras), and I’m honestly still working at it since I have to pick up all of those broken pieces, and put them back together now that I’ve come back down to the land of the living. Now, the good stuff that came from this was the kundalini awakening that I unknowingly activated which caused me to get in touch with my higher self and allow my light body to turn on. It turned me into an overnight artist amongst other things. It really feels like all the muses came to grace me with gifts. I suddenly began dancing with absolute grace and rhythm when I’ve always been on the clumsy side, I could sing better, and I started writing poetry when I’ve never been a poet in my life. But drawing is where I seem to be interested in the most. I could barely draw a goddamn stick figure before my crown chakra got blown up. I noticed I draw half of things, in an extremely abstract format, and everybody sees something different in my drawings. For a little while there I was asking people what they saw, and whatever answer I’d get I would look up the spiritual meaning behind it. Made for a pretty cool psychological game that gave others insight to themselves if they were willing to listen to the message. When I draw, I put on meditative music and my hand just flows, I never think, my mind genuinely goes blank. I quite literally become absolutely silent within, and it’s the most cathartic, peaceful thing I’ve ever gifted myself with. I started with crayons, moved up to colored pens, and now I’m onto watercolor. I never draw the same thing, but I feel like I draw a lot of the same symbols in different sequences. I got curious one day, and started mirroring my drawings to each other, and I noticed something pretty interesting. They not only make a whole different picture when the other half is there, but when I merge them together in different aspects, the picture keeps changing. Sometimes I feel like I have a little alien inside me, and I get reminded of movies like Men In Black, Independence Day, and Transformers. I know I’m drawing and utilizing the concept of universal oneness which is definitely something I think everybody should look into. The world would be a lot kinder of a place if people understood just how connected we are to everything and everyone we come into contact with. My curiosity had me digging into ancient cultures because when I opened up myself to spirit, I was extremely drawn to look into the past, and I noticed patterns everywhere. History repeats itself. People repeat patterns. Everything is just one big giant loop. And everything has a meaning. Literally everything, which can honestly be a very overwhelming concept. Anyways, after tons of research in all kinds of different directions, I found that spirituality helps with mental health, and in my opinion, is deeply linked with mental health disorders to begin with. The one thing that truly saved me, and brought out a world of creativity hidden inside me, is meditation. I put on the Solfeggio frequencies, disconnect from reality, and I let the universe move me. It’s something I recommend others should try too. The key is to trust your body to make something uniquely yours, and it will be beautiful if you don’t resist or let your ego interject. Even if you’re not drawing, just sleeping to the solfeggio frequencies helps you lighten your energetic load, and it eases anxiety and stress. Meditation gets you into the state of flow, and that right there is where magic lies. Below are a couple more of my drawings and some of the different aspects that go with each one. And if you see something, especially if it’s a repeating something that you see multiple times as you look through them, you should look up the meaning behind it. Could be your subconscious trying to tell you something 😉
By Rachel willette 5 years ago in Psyche
What Is the Difference Between Mental Health and Mental Illness?
The difference between mental health and mental illness isn’t clear to many people. It’s easier to understand the difference when you treat them as separate entities. Mental health is about mental wellness - we all have mental health. Mental illness is when someone is diagnosed with a mental disorder.
By Maulik Borsaniya5 years ago in Psyche
Understanding Body Image
I want to start by saying that I know how complicated body image can be. It’s a hard subject to tackle and a struggle for many. What makes it so difficult is that it’s so subjective. How I see myself is going to be a lot different to how you see me and when you are struggling to understand your relationship with your body or understand your emotional or disordered eating, your body image plays such an important part.
By Emma Jayne Lions5 years ago in Psyche
My Brain:Friend or Foe
Our brains are amazing it helps us tomake decisions everyday shaped by the experiences we have had through our lives, how we feel at a particular time, people who are around us and the information we have access too but what do we do when our responses are based on fight, flight or freeze and we have no idea.
By Sam Finlayson5 years ago in Psyche
