Feel-Bad Motivation vs. Feel-Good Motivation
When you need to motivate yourself to do something, do you think about how good you’ll feel once you’ve done it, or do you make yourself feel bad about not having done it yet?
I Don’t Want to Make Another Decision Today
You spend the day making decisions about people, money, risk, and deadlines. Then someone asks what you want for dinner and you do not care. Why decision fatigue at work becomes conflict at home, and what couples can do about it.
High Achievement and Shame: The Cost of Performance-Based Worth
Why can years of success fail to settle a sense of not being good enough? How achievement becomes evidence of worth, why each milestone becomes the new baseline, and what therapy can help separate.
You Got What You Wanted. What Now?
An achievement that occupied your imagination for years can become surprisingly ordinary within months. Sometimes the pursuit was providing something the achievement cannot.
The Stranger in the Mirror: Why Success Can Feel Like a Loss of Self
The emptiness you feel at the top isn't a gratitude problem; it’s an identity crisis. Explore the psychological distinction between your "Inherited Self" and your "Intrinsic Self," and why success often requires a loss of self that must be reclaimed.
Why Some People Feel Guilty When They Are Not Being Productive
Some people have difficulty enjoying free time because part of their attention remains occupied by what they could be accomplishing instead. Rest may produce guilt, agitation, or the nagging sense that time is being wasted, even when there is nothing urgent to do.
How Much Do You Have to Achieve Before You Feel Like You’re Enough?
You can have the credentials, the position, the income, and a long record of good decisions and still carry a persistent suspicion that other people think you are more capable than you are.
What Your Body’s Trying to Tell You About Stress (And Why It Matters)
Feeling exhausted, irritable, and not yourself? It might be allostatic load—the wear and tear of chronic stress. Learn why you feel this way and how to break the cycle.
Workplace Boundaries and Burnout
Advice about workplace boundaries often assumes that employees have far more control over their work than they do. The question is how much of the sacrifice is required by the job, how much you have taken on yourself, and how long the arrangement is sustainable.
The Psychology of Enough
There is a point at which having more money materially changes a person's life. What is less predictable is whether reaching that point creates the feeling of having enough.
Are You Working Hard, or Is It Hard to Stop Working?
Working long hours does not necessarily mean someone has an unhealthy relationship with work. The more useful question is whether work remains a choice.
When Alcoholism Turns Into Workaholism
Stopping drinking can change a person's life without changing every pattern that developed around alcohol. Some people become sober and begin working with the same intensity they once brought to drinking.
Burnout and the Habit of Pushing Through
Burnout does not always begin with an inability to function. How it develops in people who keep pushing through, what it does to life at home, and why better self-care rarely helps unless the pattern behind it changes.