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Most recently published stories in Psyche.
Decision Fatigue and the Hidden Cost of Constant Choice. AI-Generated.
Modern life is defined by choice. From the moment we wake up, we are faced with decisions: what to wear, what to eat, which messages to answer first, how to structure the day, what to buy, what to avoid. While choice is often framed as a form of freedom, psychology reveals a more complicated reality. Too many decisions, even small and seemingly harmless ones, can exhaust the mind. This phenomenon is known as decision fatigue, a subcategory of cognitive psychology that explores how repeated decision-making depletes mental energy and affects judgment, impulse control, and emotional regulation.
By Kyle Butler7 days ago in Psyche
The Psychology of Living in Your Head
I was at dinner with friends when I realized I had no idea what anyone had been talking about for the last fifteen minutes. They were laughing, animated, fully present in the moment. Meanwhile, I was three conversations deep in my own head—replaying something awkward I'd said two hours ago, planning tomorrow's presentation, and simultaneously worrying about whether I'd come across as distant by not contributing enough to this very conversation I wasn't actually having. My best friend touched my arm. "You okay? You seem a million miles away." She had no idea. I wasn't a million miles away. I was right there at the table, but I was also simultaneously existing in seventeen different mental dimensions, none of which were the present moment. "Sorry," I mumbled. "Just tired." But I wasn't tired. I was just living in my head again. Like always. The Inner World That Never Sleeps For as long as I can remember, my mental life has been louder, more vivid, and more consuming than my actual life. While my body moves through the world—working, eating, talking—my mind is elsewhere, running a constant stream of thoughts, scenarios, conversations, and narratives that never stop. I live in a perpetual state of analysis. Every interaction gets dissected afterward. Every decision gets examined from forty-seven angles. Every feeling gets intellectualized, categorized, and filed away for future rumination. My therapist calls it "being in your head." I call it my default state of existence. Other people seem to just be—they go to the gym and think about the gym. They watch movies and experience the story. They have conversations and stay in those conversations. I go to the gym and plan my entire week. I watch movies and critique the dialogue while simultaneously thinking about my own life's narrative arc. I have conversations while having three other conversations with myself about the conversation I'm supposed to be having. It's exhausting. But it's also the only way I know how to exist. The Architects of Overthinking I wasn't born this way. Or maybe I was, but life certainly reinforced it. Growing up, my household was unpredictable. Not chaotic in an obvious way, but emotionally volatile. I learned early that survival meant prediction—if I could think through every possible scenario, anticipate every reaction, analyze every mood shift, I could stay safe. My mind became my refuge and my fortress. When the outside world felt uncertain, I could retreat inward, where I had complete control. I could replay conversations until I found the "right" response. I could plan futures in meticulous detail. I could create entire worlds that made sense in ways reality never did. School rewarded this tendency. Teachers praised my thoughtfulness, my ability to see multiple perspectives, my rich inner life. "She's an old soul," they'd say. "Very introspective." What they didn't see was that I wasn't choosing introspection. I was trapped in it. The Prison of Possibility Living in your head means living in infinite possibility—and infinite paralysis. Every decision becomes monumental because I can see every potential outcome. Choosing a restaurant requires weighing seventeen variables. Sending a simple email takes an hour because I'm analyzing every word choice, every possible interpretation, every way it could be misunderstood. My partner once joked that I could turn "Should we get pizza tonight?" into an existential crisis. He wasn't wrong. But it's not funny when you're the one drowning in it. When your brain treats every choice like a choose-your-own-adventure book with infinite pages. When you're so busy thinking about living that you forget to actually live. I've missed so much because I was too busy processing it. Sunsets I didn't see because I was ruminating. Conversations I didn't hear because I was rehearsing what I'd say next. Moments of joy that passed me by because I was already analyzing them, trying to capture and preserve them instead of simply experiencing them.
By Ameer Moavia7 days ago in Psyche
Why We Imagine the Worst-Case Scenario
It started with a text message that never came. My boyfriend had said he'd call me after his interview. It was 6 p.m., then 7 p.m., then 8 p.m. By 9 p.m., I'd convinced myself he was dead. Not just hurt—dead. Car accident. Mugging gone wrong. Sudden brain aneurysm. I'd already mentally planned his funeral, imagined telling his parents, and pictured myself in black at the cemetery when my phone finally buzzed. "Sorry babe! Interview ran long, then grabbed drinks with the team. How was your day?" I stared at the message, my heart still hammering, hands still shaking. Three hours I'd spent in hell. Three hours of vivid, terrible scenarios playing on loop in my mind. And for what? He'd been fine. Happy, even. That's when I realized: my brain wasn't protecting me. It was torturing me. The Catastrophe Factory I've been a catastrophic thinker for as long as I can remember. Show me any situation, and I'll show you seventeen ways it could end in disaster. A friend doesn't text back? They've decided they hate me and are ghosting me forever. A slight headache? Definitely a brain tumor. My boss wants to "chat"? I'm getting fired, losing my apartment, and will end up homeless. Turbulence on a plane? We're going down, and I've already written my last words to my family in my head. It's exhausting. Every day is a mental obstacle course of imagined tragedies that never materialize. And yet, I can't stop. My brain insists on preparing for the worst, as if anticipating disaster will somehow prevent it. The Genetics of Worry My therapist once asked me, "Where did you learn to think this way?" The answer came immediately: my mother. Growing up, every minor inconvenience was treated like a catastrophe. If my dad was ten minutes late coming home, my mother would pace the kitchen, convinced he'd been in an accident. If I had a cough, she'd keep me home from school, certain it would turn into pneumonia. If the phone rang after 9 p.m., she'd answer it with a trembling voice, already bracing for bad news. I absorbed her anxiety like a sponge. I learned that the world was dangerous, that disaster lurked around every corner, and that the best way to protect yourself was to imagine every terrible possibility before it happened. The logic was twisted but compelling: if I could predict the worst, maybe I could prevent it. Or at least, I wouldn't be blindsided by it. But all I really learned was how to suffer twice—once in my imagination and once if it actually happened. The Illusion of Control Here's what I've come to understand about catastrophic thinking: it's not really about the future. It's about control. When life feels uncertain or chaotic, our brains scramble for a sense of agency. We can't control whether bad things happen, but we can control our mental preparation for them. Catastrophizing becomes a security blanket—uncomfortable, but familiar. I noticed this pattern clearly during the pandemic. While the world was genuinely scary, my catastrophic thinking went into overdrive. I wasn't just worried about getting sick; I was planning for economic collapse, societal breakdown, and the end of civilization as we knew it. My therapist pointed out something crucial: "You're so busy preparing for the worst that you're missing the present moment entirely. And ironically, all this mental preparation doesn't actually help you handle real problems when they arise." She was right. When actual challenges came—losing my job, my grandmother's death, a real health scare—all my catastrophic preparation was useless. The scenarios I'd imagined were never quite right, and the energy I'd spent worrying could have been spent living. The Brain's Ancient Wiring There's a reason catastrophic thinking is so common: evolution. Our ancestors who imagined the worst—who saw every rustling bush as a potential predator—were more likely to survive than the optimists who assumed everything was fine. Anxiety kept them alive. Vigilance was rewarded. But here's the problem: our brains haven't caught up to modern life. We're still operating with software designed for life-or-death situations, applying it to emails, traffic, and social media. That rustling bush is now an unanswered text. That potential predator is now a cryptic comment from our boss. Our amygdala—the brain's alarm system—can't tell the difference between actual danger and imagined threats. So it treats everything like an emergency.
By Ameer Moavia7 days ago in Psyche
Situational Depression: Causes, Symptoms, Recovery, and How to Heal After Life’s Challenges
Life does not always go as planned. Unexpected events such as academic failure, job loss, relationship breakdowns, or family conflicts can deeply affect emotional stability.
By Daily Motivation7 days ago in Psyche
The Emotional Exhaustion of Always Being Alert
I woke up at 3 a.m., heart racing, body drenched in sweat. There was no nightmare. No sound had startled me awake. My brain had simply decided, as it did most nights, that sleep was a luxury I couldn't afford. I lay there in the dark, listening to my partner breathe peacefully beside me, and felt a familiar wave of exhaustion wash over me. Not the kind that sleep could fix. The kind that lived in my bones, that made every day feel like I was walking through water, that came from spending every waking moment on high alert for dangers that rarely came. I was twenty-nine years old, and I was so tired of being tired. The Weight of Invisible Armor Most people don't understand what it's like to live in a body that never feels safe. They don't know what it's like to walk into a coffee shop and immediately catalog all the exits. To sit in meetings only half-listening because you're too busy reading everyone's micro-expressions for signs of anger or disappointment. To come home after a normal day and feel like you've run a marathon because your nervous system has been in fight-or-flight mode for eight straight hours. I couldn't remember the last time I'd felt truly relaxed. Even on vacation—especially on vacation—I was scanning for problems, planning for disasters, preparing for things to go wrong. My friends would laugh at the beach while I mentally reviewed our emergency contacts and the location of the nearest hospital. "You worry too much," they'd say, not unkindly. But it wasn't worry. Worry is a choice. This was a compulsion, a biological imperative, a survival mechanism that had forgotten to turn off long after the danger had passed. Learning to Live in Threat Mode I didn't always live like this. Or maybe I did, and I just didn't notice until it started breaking me. Growing up, my home was unpredictable. Not violent in the traditional sense, but volatile. My father's moods were weather systems I learned to forecast—a certain tone of voice meant a storm was coming, a particular kind of silence meant I should disappear into my room. My mother's anxiety was contagious, her catastrophic thinking a constant background hum that taught me the world was dangerous and disaster lurked around every corner. I became hypervigilant out of necessity. The girl who could sense tension before it erupted. The child who perfected the art of reading rooms and adjusting herself accordingly. The teenager who never fully relaxed because relaxing meant being caught off guard. It kept me safe then. But now? Now it was killing me slowly, one anxious moment at a time. The Thousand Tiny Calculations People don't see the work that hypervigilance requires. They don't see the constant calculations running in the background of my mind: Is my boss's email shorter than usual? Did I do something wrong? Why did my friend take three hours to respond? Are they mad at me? My partner seems quiet. Is this the beginning of the end? Every interaction becomes a puzzle to solve, every silence a threat to decode. I'm exhausted before lunch because I've already survived a dozen imagined catastrophes that never happened. At the grocery store, I'm planning escape routes. At dinner parties, I'm monitoring everyone's alcohol intake in case someone gets aggressive. During normal conversations, I'm three steps ahead, anticipating conflict and preparing my defense. My therapist calls it hyperarousal. My body calls it normal. The rest of the world calls it anxiety. They're all right. The Body That Remembers The cruelest part of hypervigilance is that it lives in your body, not just your mind. I could intellectually understand that I was safe, that my current life bore no resemblance to my childhood, that most people weren't threats. But my nervous system didn't get the memo. My heart still raced when someone raised their voice—even in excitement. My stomach still dropped when I heard footsteps approaching quickly. My shoulders still tensed when I heard keys in the door, even though it was just my partner coming home from work. Trauma had taught my body that survival meant constant vigilance. And bodies, it turns out, are slow learners when it comes to unlearning fear. I tried everything to calm down. Meditation made me more anxious—sitting still only gave my brain more time to catastrophize. Exercise helped, but only temporarily. Alcohol worked until it didn't, until one glass became three became a problem I didn't want to admit. What I needed wasn't relaxation techniques. What I needed was to convince my nervous system that it was finally, truly safe. The Breaking Point My wake-up call came on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon. I was driving home from work, and suddenly I couldn't breathe. My vision tunneled. My hands went numb. I pulled over, certain I was having a heart attack. At the emergency room, after hours of tests, the doctor gave me the diagnosis I'd been avoiding: panic attack. Severe anxiety. Chronic stress. "Your body is in a constant state of crisis," she explained gently. "You're running on adrenaline and cortisol all the time. Eventually, something has to give." I nodded, unable to speak around the lump in my throat. Because she was right. Something had given. My body, after years of being ignored, had finally screamed loud enough to get my attention.
By Ameer Moavia7 days ago in Psyche
How Anxiety Traps the Brain in Survival Mode
I lived for five years like I was being chased by a predator no one else could see. My heart raced at traffic lights. My hands trembled during normal conversations. My body prepared for catastrophe every waking moment. The threat wasn't real—but my nervous system didn't know that. It started with the panic attacks. The first one hit me in a grocery store on a Saturday afternoon. One moment I was reaching for cereal, the next my heart was pounding so hard I thought it would explode. My vision tunneled. My chest constricted. I couldn't breathe. I was certain—absolutely certain—I was having a heart attack and would die right there in aisle seven. I abandoned my cart and stumbled outside, gasping, shaking, convinced these were my final moments. Twenty minutes later, I was fine. Physically fine. The ER doctor confirmed it: "Just a panic attack. Your heart is healthy. You're okay." But I wasn't okay. Because my brain had just learned something terrifying: danger could strike anywhere, anytime, without warning. And if it could happen in a safe, ordinary grocery store, it could happen anywhere. From that day forward, my brain decided I was never safe. And it's been trying to save my life ever since—from threats that don't exist. The Alarm That Won't Stop After that first panic attack, my nervous system essentially got stuck with its finger on the panic button. My body remained in a constant state of high alert, scanning every environment for potential danger, interpreting normal sensations as emergency signals, preparing to fight or flee from threats that weren't there. Heart rate slightly elevated? Must be another heart attack coming. Feeling dizzy from standing up too fast? Something's wrong. You're dying. Chest feels tight? Can't breathe. This is it. Every normal bodily sensation became evidence of impending catastrophe. My brain, trying to protect me, had become my greatest threat. The anxiety spread like a virus through my life. I stopped going to grocery stores—too dangerous, too triggering. Then restaurants. Then anywhere crowded. Then anywhere that wasn't home. My world shrank to the size of my apartment, and even there, I wasn't safe from my own nervous system. I couldn't explain to people what was happening. "There's nothing to be anxious about," they'd say, and they were right. Objectively, logically, rationally—there was no real danger. But my brain wasn't operating logically anymore. It was operating from a part far older and more primitive than logic—the part that keeps you alive when there's actual danger. Except it couldn't tell the difference between real danger and perceived danger. To my nervous system, it was all the same threat. Understanding the Trap My therapist drew me a diagram of the brain—the prefrontal cortex up top, responsible for rational thinking, and the amygdala buried deeper, responsible for fear and survival responses. "In a healthy system," she explained, "these work together. The amygdala detects potential threats and alerts the prefrontal cortex, which assesses whether the threat is real. If it's not, the cortex tells the amygdala to stand down." She drew an arrow showing the communication loop. Then she drew a big red X through it. "In anxiety disorders, especially after panic attacks, this communication breaks down. The amygdala keeps sending danger signals, but the prefrontal cortex can't override them. Your thinking brain knows you're safe, but your survival brain doesn't believe it. So you stay stuck in survival mode—fight, flight, or freeze—even though there's nothing to survive." That explained everything. Why I could logically know I was safe but still feel terrified. Why rational thinking didn't make the anxiety go away. Why my body responded to a text message or a phone call like it was a life-threatening emergency. My brain had essentially lost the ability to feel safe. The survival system was running the show, and it only knew one setting: danger. Life in Survival Mode Living in constant survival mode is like being a soldier who never comes home from war. Your body maintains battle-ready status 24/7, flooding your system with stress hormones, keeping your muscles tensed, your senses heightened, your mind scanning for threats. Except there's no battle. There's just normal life—work, relationships, errands, conversations. But your body treats it all like combat. I couldn't sleep because my brain interpreted relaxation as vulnerability. I couldn't eat normally because my stomach was perpetually clenched. I couldn't focus because my attention was constantly pulled toward potential threats—a weird look from someone, an unexpected sound, a change in plans. My memory started failing. Not surprising—when your brain is focused entirely on survival, it doesn't bother filing away mundane information like where you put your keys or what someone said five minutes ago. I was exhausted constantly, but in a way that sleep couldn't fix. This was nervous system exhaustion—the kind that comes from your body being in crisis mode month after month with no relief. My immune system weakened. I caught every cold, every flu. Chronic inflammation showed up in bloodwork. My body was cannibalizing itself, burning through resources to fuel a state of emergency that never ended.
By Ameer Moavia7 days ago in Psyche
My Experience on Silencing Autism
I wanted to do an educational article on something that has recently come up in my attention. I was having lunch with some of my peers - and one of the ladies spoke briefly about someone she provides care for: "You know, so-and-so still is so loud and needs to learn to not make everyone miserable just because she is miserable." The so-and-so is an autistic individual and I wanted to say something then, but bit my tongue.
By The Schizophrenic Mom8 days ago in Psyche
When Your Thoughts Become Your Enemy
I've never been physically harmed by another person. But for thirty years, I've carried an abuser with me everywhere I go—a voice in my head that knows exactly how to destroy me, that never sleeps, never relents, never runs out of ammunition. The cruelest part? That voice is mine. I'm staring at a text I've rewritten seventeen times. It's just a simple message to a friend—casual, friendly, nothing important. But my mind has turned it into a minefield. Each version gets scrutinized, dissected, rejected. Too enthusiastic. She'll think you're desperate. Too casual. She'll think you don't care. That emoji is childish. She'll think you're immature. No emoji looks cold. She'll think you're mad at her. An hour passes. The text remains unsent. I give up, delete the entire thread, and spend the next three hours convinced I'm a social failure who can't even send a normal text message like a functioning adult. This is what it's like when your thoughts become your enemy. Every moment is a battle you can't win, because the opponent knows every weakness, every insecurity, every past failure. The opponent is you. The Voice That Never Stops I can't remember when the voice started. It feels like it's always been there, a constant narrator providing running commentary on everything I do, say, think, or feel. But it's not a kind narrator. It's a critic. A judge. A prosecutor building a case for why I'm fundamentally defective. You're so awkward. Everyone noticed. That was a stupid thing to say. They're all judging you. You'll never be good enough. Why do you even try? Look at everyone else succeeding while you struggle. What's wrong with you? The voice sounds like me—my tone, my vocabulary, my speech patterns. But it says things I would never say to another person. Things so cruel, so cutting, so relentlessly negative that if someone else spoke to me that way, I'd recognize it as abuse. But because the voice is mine, because it lives inside my own head, I accepted it as truth. For decades, I believed that this constant stream of self-criticism was just realistic self-assessment. I thought everyone's internal dialogue was this harsh. I didn't realize I was being psychologically tortured by my own mind. The Architecture of Self-Hatred The voice didn't appear randomly. It had architects. My father, who responded to every mistake with disappointment and disdain. "Is that really the best you can do?" he'd ask, even when I'd tried my hardest. Nothing was ever good enough. My mother, who loved me but constantly compared me to others. "Why can't you be more like your sister? She never has these problems." The kids at school who found my differences—my quietness, my sensitivity, my interests—worthy of mockery. "You're so weird. No wonder no one wants to hang out with you." Each voice, each message, each moment of criticism got internalized. They became the foundation of my inner dialogue. By the time I was twelve, I'd built an entire internal system dedicated to constant self-surveillance and judgment. I thought this was normal. I thought everyone had a voice telling them they weren't enough, weren't right, weren't acceptable. I didn't realize I'd essentially installed an abuser inside my own head. The Daily Assault Living with a hostile internal voice is exhausting in ways that are hard to explain to people who don't experience it. Every action gets evaluated and found wanting. Making breakfast: You're eating too much. You have no self-control. Going to work: Everyone there knows you're incompetent. You're fooling no one. Talking to colleagues: They're just being polite. They don't actually like you. Every interaction gets replayed obsessively, dissected for evidence of failure. A conversation that seemed fine in the moment becomes, under the voice's scrutiny, proof of my social inadequacy. A work presentation that went well becomes evidence that I'm a fraud who somehow tricked people into thinking I'm competent. The voice excels at worst-case scenarios. A friend doesn't text back immediately? They're done with you. You said something wrong. You always do. A minor mistake at work? You're going to get fired. Everyone will know you're a failure. It's like having a terrorist living in your brain, constantly threatening catastrophe, constantly predicting doom, constantly ensuring you never feel safe or secure or good enough. The Isolation of Internal War The cruelest aspect of this kind of suffering is how invisible it is. People would tell me I seemed confident, capable, successful. They had no idea that inside, I was being shredded by my own thoughts every moment of every day. They couldn't hear the voice telling me I was worthless even as I smiled and nodded in conversation. I couldn't explain it. How do you tell someone, "I'm being abused by my own mind"? How do you articulate that you're in constant psychological pain from a source no one else can see or hear? I tried once, to explain to my partner why I'd been quiet and withdrawn. "My thoughts are really mean to me," I said, and immediately felt ridiculous. It sounded childish, trivial. He looked confused. "So... just think different thoughts?" he suggested, genuinely trying to help. If only it were that simple. You can't just "think different thoughts" when your entire neural architecture is wired for self-attack. It's like telling someone with a broken leg to "just walk normally." The system itself is damaged. So I stopped trying to explain. I suffered alone, in my head, where the voice could continue its assault without witnesses, without intervention, without mercy. The Breaking Point The crisis came on an ordinary Tuesday morning. I was getting ready for work, and the voice was particularly vicious. Criticizing my appearance, my clothes, my body, my hair, my face. Nothing was right. Everything was wrong. I looked in the mirror and heard: You're disgusting. No wonder no one could ever really love you. You're fundamentally unlovable. You should just give up. And something in me broke. Not dramatically—there was no sudden decision or moment of clarity. I just... couldn't anymore. I couldn't carry this voice one more day. I couldn't live in a head that hated me. I couldn't survive this internal war. I called in sick to work, made an emergency appointment with a therapist, and said the words I'd never said out loud before: "I think my thoughts are trying to kill me." Understanding the Enemy My therapist didn't look surprised. She'd heard this before. She had a name for it: "toxic internal critic" or what some call the "inner critic gone rogue." "It's a part of you that developed to protect you," she explained. "When you were young and facing criticism or rejection, this voice internalized those messages to help you avoid future pain. If it criticized you first, you'd be prepared for others' criticism. If it kept you small and controlled, you'd avoid rejection." The voice had started as a misguided protector. But over decades, it had become a tyrant. She taught me about cognitive distortions—the ways anxious and depressed brains systematically distort reality to confirm negative beliefs. My internal voice used all of them: All-or-nothing thinking: "If you're not perfect, you're a complete failure." Catastrophizing: "One mistake means everything will fall apart." Mind reading: "Everyone is judging you negatively." Personalization: "Everything bad that happens is your fault." Understanding these patterns didn't make the voice stop. But it helped me recognize that the voice wasn't telling truth—it was filtering reality through the lens of trauma, fear, and distorted thinking.
By Ameer Moavia8 days ago in Psyche
