The idea of taking a break from technology to ‘reset’ the brain has been gaining popularity. But does digital detoxing actually work, or is it simply another health trend that distracts us from our real problems?

‘Spending time with the dying without a doctorly purpose required rewiring.’ This heartfelt story details how a medical student placed on a hospice rotation brought her newborn baby to accompany a dying patient

‘Everyone has a body, and all bodies can dance.’ From overcoming mental blocks to picking a style and what to look for in an instructor, this lovely, inclusive Guide on how to start learning dance will get you boogying in no time @dawndavisloring.bsky.social

How lovely is it to find ‘someone whose experience of the world overlaps with [ours]’? In this lovely Note to Self, the writer Hannah Seo contemplates the comfort that comes from living in a shared reality with her partner – which research has found is predictive of higher wellbeing @hannahseo.com

As we head into the season of rewatching holiday rom-coms, pay attention to how many end with someone sprinting through an airport or racing across a city to confess their love. From ‘When Harry Met Sally’ to ‘Love, Actually’, this trope appears again and again, and there’s a fascinating reason why

When meditation advice felt flat and therapy sessions ended, ChatGPT became an unexpected companion in managing thought spirals. This thoughtful story explores how AI offered something different: constant availability, pattern recognition across conversations, and freedom from social judgment

Like characters outgrowing their creator, our teddy bears developed lives of their own. A Turning Point by @scribblingsam.bsky.social

Psyche articles are now available to listen to on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Listen now! buff.ly/MqeYxAB

Taking his childhood companion Blue Ted along to live overseas, Sam Firman discovered how storytelling, make-believe and roleplaying can be an enchanting gateway to building relationships and making sense of our world @scribblingsam.bsky.social

Honoured to feature in @psyche.co discussing how we need to change how we think about #purpose - “Forming purpose is about carving out opportunities for cultivation rather than waiting for a sudden discovery”. #TheTreeThatBends

But if we do not want to live in societies like that, how can we stop the relentless erosion of institutional trust? Some thoughts. My piece for @psyche.co. psyche.co/ideas/were-l...

It’s normal to worry you’ll say the wrong thing. Here’s how to ensure your words and gestures are as supportive as possible. A Guide by Lauren Breen & Maarten Eisma

When you need to complete a complex task, imagine daubing paint on a canvas rather than perfecting intricate brushwork. A Note to Self by @richardfisher.bsky.social

Learning the true story behind Stuart Gilbert’s famous unfinished portrait of George Washington has changed Senior Editor Richard Fisher’s approach to his perfectionist tendencies. In this delightful Note to Self, he allows himself to leave things less-than-perfect

Have you ever felt unsure about how to talk to someone who’s just lost a loved one? It’s a common worry that can lead to social isolation for bereaved people. In this gentle yet practical Guide, psychologists Lauren Breen and Maarten Eisma lay out simple steps to be supportive – and what to avoid

Is there any evidence that tailoring lessons to ‘learning styles’ actually improves learning outcomes? This video by @veritasium.bsky.social examines this assumption to find out what research really suggests about how we best absorb knowledge

In this insightful Idea, clinical psychologist Ross White argues that forming purpose is more about carving out opportunities for cultivation rather than waiting for a sudden discovery

On the importance of Tolerance as the very bedrock of the freedoms we so love: "We don’t think twice before listing freedom as an essential value and as a fundamental right. However, we often forget the other side of the civic coin – toleration."

I've written for Psyche about some of the extraordinary things institutional trust enables us to do, and why we have to live with the fact that big organisations screw up.

As a young gay teenager in Texas, Jose Alfaro was kicked out of home, ending up young, desperate and alone – an ideal victim for a sex trafficker. Now a dedicated activist, Alfaro tells his extraordinary story of survival, courage and unexpected kindness to Larry Lindner

Beautifully capturing the close yet shifting bond between the twins, this short film touches on the themes of caregiving, dependence and devotion that echo through Psyche’s Turning Points and our wider exploration of how love, care and responsibility take form over a lifetime

Modern life relies on trust in civic institutions. Through a historical lens, this Idea looks back at the vast benefits trust once delivered, traces how scepticism has grown and touches on ways we might restore trust while retaining healthy scepticism @rostaylor.bsky.social

Kama muta – derived from a Sanskrit term that means ‘moved by love’ – describes moments that produce a warm and fuzzy feeling. And experiencing this positive emotional response helps to motivate us to continue engaging in the relationships that spark it

Drawing on the writings of the philosopher C E M Joad and @kikumbhar.bsky.social’s childhood memories of living in crowded, intimate proximity with others, this Idea is an illustration of tolerance as a civic virtue, something we can gradually cultivate through practice and attention

In this Turning Point, @stephauteri.bsky.social stands inside a moment shaped by estrangement, decline and the quiet ache of uncertainty. As her father moves through the fog of a dementia diagnosis, and her brother drifts into distance and withdrawal, she finds herself pulled between two losses

For Human Rights Day 2025, we’re reminded that human rights are the everyday essentials. Public toilets might seem mundane, yet their disappearance is a civic catastrophe: limiting mobility, shrinking public life, and quietly excluding those who most rely on shared, accessible spaces #HumanRights

Abdullah Al-Salim Ellai is the last person on the Yemeni island of Socotra to call the caves his home. This lushly captured short documentary from the filmmaker Ivan Olita finds Ellai living amid striking contrasts and contradictions, exploring what it means to live authentically in a changing world

Alongside all the other ways we produce language, self-talk is a wonderfully useful tool. It can help you solve problems, clarify your thinking and process your emotions – and this Guide shows you how to reap these benefits

What does a three-month jail sentence look like? More importantly, what does it taste like? In this Turning Point, Jamie Valentino, shares his memories of baking wholewheat bread at Rikers Island to paint a vivid picture of life on the inside

Polyamory can feel like a buzzword – but is it really such a recent phenomenon? In this illuminating video, the eminent psychotherapist Esther Perel and the sex therapist Margie Nichols dispel common myths around polyamorous relationships

This #NationalGriefAwarenessWeek (UK), we’re sharing this Guide from the archive on how to express the indescribable feelings of grief. By noticing and understanding how they unfolds in waves and quietly reshapes our inner world, we can find constructive ways to let them out

We are curious creatures. We spend our waking lives consuming knowledge through books, podcasts, articles, and gossip. But if we like information so much, why don’t we seek out more of it? The answer lies in how curiosity works as its own drive, like hunger or thirst, but one that’s highly selective

This intimate short documentary invites us into the vivid paintings of Salah Elmur, where memory, longing and imagination converge. Through antique studio portraits, weathered mugshots and a deeply cherished family archive, he explores photography’s almost magical ability to hold time still

With the right habits you can change your life for the better, or so the logic goes. But what does it take to form a healthy habit? In this eye-opening Idea, two psychologists look afresh at the assumptions baked into classic habit science and offer a new way to think about the work of living well

In the ‘harsh, inventive and full of life’ desert, Skye learned to move with the land rather than against it, discovering that resilience isn’t about domination but about humility, attention and deep connection. This evocative piece provides a fresh, grounding perspective on a widely touted virtue

Ever spent hours agonising over every possible choice, only to end up wondering if you made the right one? That’s the life of a maximiser. This week’s Note to Self explores how this mindset can make the sting of regret even sharper when a decision doesn’t turn out as hoped

In this Idea, the clinical psychologist Eric Jannazzo reflects on what it truly means to exist and to die. By seeing ourselves not as static nouns, but as unfolding processes, we can soften the sharp edges of existential fear and embrace life’s constant becoming

This powerful story shines a light on what a severe mental health illness really looks like, far from the casual way ‘OCD’ is tossed around in everyday conversation. It reveals how devastating, consuming and life-altering the condition can be, even for someone who has fought hard to manage it

If you want to be your family’s unofficial archivist - or even just to write down a few recipes - here’s everything I know about how to do it.

Love and morality might seem like separate realms – one concerned with unruly feelings, the other with universal rules. But in this video, professor of philosophy Meghan Sullivan argues that the two can, and perhaps should, be deeply intertwined

This insightful Guide invites us to become the archivists of our own family’s memories: to gather letters, recipes, objects, photographs and fragments that hold our shared past together as a way of honouring the people we come from, noticing what has been silenced, and choosing what we pass on

What if shared false memories and other strange quirks of experience aren’t proof of alternate universes, but reminders of how uncanny our own reality already is? This week’s Idea explores ‘reality shift’, emphasising its true value in helping us see the weirdness and wondrousness of our existence

When every space demands something from us, where do we go to simply be? In today’s beautiful Turning Point, a former rabbi discovers what we’ve lost in our hurried world: places where people can feel cared for without being pressured to buy more or move along

Have you noticed patterns in your life – themes or dynamics that seem to repeat even when you try to do things differently? This week’s Guide explores how schema therapy helps you identify these deep-rooted beliefs, understand the coping modes that keep them alive, and gently loosen their hold

Marketers have become astonishingly skilled at shaping not just what we eat, but what we feel when we eat. In this video, the philosopher Barry C Smith unpacks how the brain distinguishes between liking and wanting, and how clever branding exploits that gap to keep us coming back for more

Does being autistic make me a better doctor than a friend? A doctor reflects on how recognising her autism has helped her see the strengths she brings to her work and the social barriers she faces. This compassionate, revelatory story broadens our sense of what empathy can look like

Smartphone bans are all over the headlines, but what about the children who genuinely need their phones? This Note to Self shines a light on a group often overlooked: those who rely on their devices for health and wellbeing, and who are made more vulnerable by blanket calls for phone-free childhoods

Today’s Idea by @trishedges.bsky.social draws on existential and social phenomenology to examine the shift from ‘we’ to ‘us’, showing how the first-person plural is shaped by power, social identity and the gaze of others – and how an ‘us’ can constrain, yet also galvanise collective action

Panic isn’t a modern ailment. Humans have lived with it for centuries, long before medications such as benzodiazepines existed. So what did people in other eras and cultures do when terror struck, and how did they steady themselves? buff.ly/7zR9MIq

What can we learn by taking transcendent UFO stories seriously? A filmmaker takes a leap of faith when he decides to risk ridicule and make a serious film about UFO sightings. Watch the full documentary here buff.ly/t0sD89o