anxiety

A look at anxiety in its many forms and manifestations; what is the nature of this specific pattern of extreme fear and worry?

How Constant Comparison Slowly Breaks Self-Worth
It started with a wedding photo. Jessica was scrolling through Instagram at 7:23 a.m., still in bed, coffee cooling on her nightstand. The algorithm served her a picture of someone she'd gone to college with—Amber, who she hadn't thought about in years.
By Ameer Moavia14 days ago in Psyche
Promise That You Will Sing About Me
I think about death more than I admit. Not in a dramatic way. Not in the kind of way that begs for attention. More like a quiet question that keeps tapping on the glass when everything else goes silent. Usually at night. When the lights shut off. When the world finally stops asking things of me.
By Jonathan14 days ago in Psyche
The Psychology of Feeling “Not Enough
The Morning She Stopped Being Enough Sarah stood in front of her closet at 6:47 a.m., paralyzed by a decision that shouldn't have mattered.
By Ameer Moavia14 days ago in Psyche
The Weight of White
Arthur couldn't sleep. Again. It wasn't the usual restlessness, the buzzing hum of late-night traffic, or the faint wail of a distant siren. Tonight, it was a profound, suffocating quiet. He sat up, swung his legs over the side of the bed, the cold floorboards biting his bare feet. He rubbed his face, the stubble coarse against his palm. Something felt… different. He padded to the window, pulled back the heavy curtain.
By HAADI15 days ago in Psyche
The Obsidian Bloom
Elara found it by accident, or maybe her feet, numb with a sorrow she couldn’t quite name, just carried her there. A crumbling wall, ancient and choked with desperate, grasping ivy, behind the forgotten greenhouse at the edge of town. A ragged gap, just wide enough. Through it, a light. Not sunlight. Something else, shimmering, cold. The air inside hit her like a blast from a deep freezer, but it wasn’t unpleasant, not like the suffocating, humid stickiness of August. It was clean. A profound stillness pressed against her ears, quieting the frantic, buzzing static that had lived inside her head for months.
By HAADI16 days ago in Psyche
A Bruised Sky on the Tongue
The morning light, thin and watery through her window, bled into her mouth before it even touched her eyes. Not just a visual thing, no. For Elara, the color blue had a taste, a constant, low thrum against the back of her tongue, a cold, metallic tang that clung like forgotten copper pennies. She woke with it, breathed it, carried it through every hour, a secret, unshakeable burden. This morning, it was the pale, washed-out blue of a winter sky, sharp and brittle, like sucking on ice that had been scraped with a dull knife. She reached for her coffee, hoping the bitter black would cut through it, but it just added another layer, a murky undertow of cold. She swallowed, trying to dislodge the feeling, to scrape it off with her teeth.
By HAADI17 days ago in Psyche
The Grey Shore
Elias sat at his desk, staring at the screen. Spreadsheets. Always spreadsheets. The fluorescent hum above was a dull throb in his skull. Outside, the city traffic groaned, a constant, ugly growl. He was thirty-two, lived in a cramped third-floor apartment, and felt a quiet, persistent emptiness. Not unhappiness, exactly. Just a flatline.
By HAADI18 days ago in Psyche
Why Somatic Healing Techniques Trump Traditional Self Help
When the body feels and becomes safe - that is when pain and trauma starts to transmute. Talk therapy, combined with listing down the pros and cons of aiding in decision making, no matter the magnitude, is all well and good; yet such self-help and healing techniques do not reach the somatic and sticky bits, right up to the fascia. In no way, shape or form are these techniques being discounted and brushed aside; however for deep healing from caretaking, people pleasing, co-dependencies and addictions (all in the name of unresolved trauma - whether acquired through childhood and/or adulthood); being stuck in the head is a significant disservice to you, and to all of us. (Yes, we are all connected at the end of the day, even if you live in the Northern Hemisphere).
By Justine Crowley18 days ago in Psyche
To Know Thy Enemy
There are many people who want to have success in life... But they struggle tremendously. We have watched as this often crumbles into forms of tribalism...
By Dr. Cody Dakota Wooten, DFM, DHM, DAS (hc)19 days ago in Psyche
Christmas is Not Always “Beer and Skittles”. Top Story - December 2025.
If you find the holiday season challenging, you’re not alone. I have never been a big fan of Christmas. I have always found it a bit pretentious. It is a time for kids, really. I have not had kids in my life, so the "children's influence" around this time of year doesn’t occur.
By Calvin London20 days ago in Psyche
When pain shows on the skin: how emotional abuse can steal your peace and your beauty
There was a time in my life when a was trapped in an emotionally abusive situation. Each day felt like a silent war. I cried often. I was anxious, unsettled, and constantly walking on egg shells. I smiled in front of others_ at school, in public during conversations_ but inside, I was deeply broken.
By CIM20 days ago in Psyche
The Grey Harbor of My Mind
Leo’s life was a beige office cubicle, the kind with stains he didn’t want to think about. Fluorescent lights hummed a constant, low-grade headache into his temples. Every day, the same screen glow, the same spreadsheets, the same flat coffee from the breakroom machine. But in his head, the light was different. It was the bruised, pewter grey of a sky over a cold sea, pushing down on old stone cottages with slate roofs, black with damp and time. Always there, this image. A harbor, not grand, but tight, almost choked with fishing boats, their paint peeling, nets piled high like sleeping monsters. He’d never been, not in his life, not a single foot on that rough-hewn quay, but he knew the place like he knew the back of his own hand, better maybe. It was a constant ache, a phantom limb of a memory.
By HAADI21 days ago in Psyche