A short Note to Self I wrote for @psyche.co about the graph that more or less changed the course of my life psyche.co/notes-to-sel...

Our piece in @psyche.co, based on our perspective @thelancet.com Psychiatry www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

In our Note to Self this week, Tamur shares the insight he gained from taking a smartphone break, how the brief escape helped him see social media use in a stark new light

As a crime reporter, the author wrote about people behind bars. But she learned much more when she befriended an incarcerated writer buff.ly/OL3rvSY

A difficult truth about being human is that our brains aren’t ‘wired’ to make us feel content. However, as psychology professor @lauriesantos.bsky.social explains in this video, this doesn’t mean we’re doomed to spend our lives churning away on the hedonic treadmill

Is the brain-disease model still the best way to think about addiction? Do its outcomes justify educating entire generations of patients, families and clinicians to view addiction primarily as a problem of individual brain pathology?

On #WorldGratitudeDay, we’re sharing an article on why positive psychology highlights the personal benefits of gratitude – and how this powerful emotion helps bind communities together

ADHD is typically thought to be wired into the brain early. But many cases may be better seen as products of digital life

Orgasms are often thought of as ineffable – so what happens when someone attempts to put the experience into words? In Come, the filmmaker Bronwen Parker-Rhodes captures several womentrying to articulate the experience, blending anatomical, metaphorical, and poetic insights buff.ly/m0FcodT

The past is vividly alive in the Old Town of Würzburg in Germany. But why is walking through ‘historic’ Würzburg so unsettling?

According to Wim Hof, one of the world’s best-known breathing teachers, learning to intentionally inhale and exhale can allow us to ‘control the life force’ and make us ‘the alchemist of life itself’. But what do such claims really mean, and is there any truth to them?

‘I felt so humiliated – the money I’d lost, how easily I’d been fooled, appearing before the grand jury, all of it.’ I was a pushover with a habit of picking cheating men as boyfriends; then one of them pushed me too far

So lovely to have this piece out in the world...

" #Friendship, #Aristotle says, is ‘one of the most indispensable requirements of life’: to flourish in this #life, we must have excellent #friends. He offered a set of precise definitions alongside a rich spectrum of nuances.": buff.ly/Okyf0jq via @psyche.co #humanity

In this riveting dive into cognition, meaning-making and human progress, Judy Fan @judithfan.bsky.social, an assistant professor of psychology at Stanford University, explores how we transform abstract concepts into real-world innovations. Video by MIT Quest for Intelligence

Although rarely talked about, hair-pulling and skin-picking are surprisingly common, affecting 2 to 5 per cent of the population, or between 200-400 million people worldwide. Understanding the psychology behind this can help you resist the urges and begin to heal

When the author came across the U-shaped happiness curve, he knew he had to act if he wanted to buck the midlife average

What can a physician and academic learn from spending the day with a retired Catholic sister?

‘There is a negative space in everyone’s soul.’ In this acclaimed short Minus Plus Multiply, the London-based Taiwanese illustrator and filmmaker Chu-Chieh Lee mines her experiences of anxiety and self-discovery to craft a surreal animated world

A vegetable garden is more than a source of sustenance – it’s a psychological sanctuary. And though many of us today feel more comfortable walking the aisles of a grocery store than we do tending a vegetable garden, growing our own food is something that just about all of us have the ability to do

‘Perhaps I also wished, some day, to be the mother to a daughter that my mother was to me’ She cherishes her three sons, yet still yearned for a daughter, only to discover the bond she longed for was already there

Twice as many people worldwide die from suicide as from homicide. On World Suicide Prevention Day, we’re revisiting this Guide on how to help your loved ones back from the brink #WorldSuicidePreventionDay

The English writer and artist William Blake’s wondrously illustrated books of poetry reject most forms of authority and embrace the full spectrum of human emotion. This video essay focuses on two of Blake’s most famous works

By all scientific standards, caffeine is a psychoactive drug. So why do we treat it like nothing more than a productivity hack? And what would happen if we treated caffeine the way we treat other drugs?

This Life story explores one woman’s journey to reconnect with her Lenape heritage by learning to hear the voice of her ancestors and speak Lenape, a language silenced for generations

Ever noticed how once you learn about something – such as a word, person or concept – you start to notice it more frequently? This is called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, and there’s an explanation for why it occurs

If you find out that a friend has done something morally wrong, should you continue being friends with them? Our intuition tells us no, but this may not be the best option

Filmed for the BBC series Face to Face in 1959, this archival interview features Carl Jung at the age of 84, just two years before his death, surveying his life and reflecting on the collective unconscious, his clash with Freud and humanity’s uncertain future

People who haven’t seen much absurdist comedy might have wondered how the appearance of the show equated to the things people saw in it, and the things they said about it. How did the content of one give rise to the feelings expressed in the other? Read this Idea from the Psyche archive here

Lucy Irvine found herself, from an early age, at odds with the expectations and conventions into which she was born. In this film, she recalls her life-changing decision to spend 14 months on an uninhabited island

‘I thought of all the bodies I had seen in my career – strangers to me, but beloved to someone – and the professional and personal collapsed.’ How does a war reporter cope with personal grief?

'Why hadn’t any of my chemistry teachers highlighted the beauty of this? That there is a name and a place for every element – known and unknown.' This moving story from the Psyche archive explores the heartbreak, healing, and unexpected joys of homeschooling

The largest study on sexual orientation genetics found that DNA influences less than 25% of same-sex behavior, highlighting the dominant role of social and cultural factors. This challenges the ‘gay gene’ narratives and encourages more nuanced discussions on identity, biology, and human diversity

‘This was the first time that I had ever felt a disconnect between what a Christian adult was telling me and what I saw with my own eyes.’ Confessions of a teenage fundamentalist. Read this Life story from the Psyche archive here

If you have ever loved unrequitedly, then you know that living without any hope for a future with your beloved is a bitter experience indeed. But can it be made bittersweet through a change in attitude?

Bored with Hollywood and Netflix? Becoming an adventurous and informed explorer of the cinema world is in everyone’s grasp. Read this Guide from the Psyche archive here

In this video from the Psyche archive, Matt Abrahams, an author and lecturer in organisational behaviour at Stanford University, offers some practical advice to help you transform small talk into an opportunity to connect, learn and grow. Video by the Harvard Business Review Director: Erik Scanlon

This Guide from the Psyche archive suggests several philosophically inspired reasons not to be fearful of your own death

New research shows that people satisfy their curiosity in different ways. Are you a hunter, a busybody or a dancer?

This Guide from the Psyche archive takes us on a journey into the ‘gut microbiome’, and teaches us more about what you can do to improve and maintain your gut health

Featuring Richard Schwartz, the architect of internal family systems therapy (IFS), in conversation with Esther Perel, this video from the Psyche archive explores how your inner critic is a part of you trying to help and learning why it speaks might just be the bridge to knowing yourself more deeply

Flirtatious texts are soon forgotten. This Guide from the Psyche archive breaks down how to express your feelings in a beautiful way that will make a lasting impression buff.ly/YckGEFp

New research has allowed psychologists to identify a way to seed ‘involuntary positive mental images’ in the brain. This Note to Self from the archive shows you how you can try it for yourself buff.ly/n7UijGY

You don’t need to be a sensitive person or an ‘empath’ to develop good validation skills. This Guide from the Psyche archive teaches you how to provide validation to others, which in turn can empower you to improve your relationships, decrease conflict and increase self-compassion

Bringing home a puppy has ignited a kind of chaos that the author didn’t know her stepfamily needed. In the mess, the dog became the glue, the healing heartbeat, the unexpected salve stitching them together

Asteroid economics is a phenomena where our growing environmental and political crises, bearing existential risk for human beings, trigger irrational spending and consumption. Why is it the psychological trap we need to escape?

Over the past decade or so, there has been a huge shift in our attitude to sleep in the Western world. We’ve moved from ‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead’ to scientists, doctors and health bloggers alike emphasising the importance of getting our Zzzs. But is its value being overinflated?

In ‘Double Portrait’, the London-based artist Ian Bruce animates a decades-long love story, recalling how the relationship was shaped by near-misses, career highs and lows, long silences and unforeseeable turns

Are you beautiful? New research into the science of attraction teaches us the answer to this question is likely ‘yes’, as its less about meeting aesthetic norms and more about compatibility

An encounter with a psychic medium had a remarkable impact on the author and led her to reconnect with her late mother, sparking intense personal reflections about what is real, what is not and the nature of grief, healing, and connection buff.ly/O89b8H9