Sometimes the brain keeps thinking because it is still trying to understand what happened.

And sometimes the body reacts to an old danger before the thinking part has caught up with the fact that we are safe now.

Have you ever felt exhausted by your own thoughts?

Not because you are thinking about anything useful.

Not because you are solving a problem.

Just because your brain has opened seventeen tabs, started playing alarm music through all of them and refuses to tell you where the off switch is.

You replay conversations.

You wonder whether you said the wrong thing.

You think about what might happen next.

You notice a change in someone’s voice and immediately start looking for the danger hidden inside it.

Sometimes the thinking feels like it is happening in your mind.

Sometimes it arrives in your body first.

Your chest tightens. Your stomach drops. Your heart starts beating harder. You feel restless, tense or frightened, even though nothing dangerous seems to be happening right now.

The hardest part can be knowing that you are safe now while your body is still preparing for what happened then.

This week’s question came from .

Her original question was:

“Why can’t I stop thinking? My brain never stops.”

She then added another question, explaining that after difficult experiences during her son’s addiction and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), including periods of screaming and fear, hearing his voice could still make her anxiety rise.

Rather than treat these as completely separate questions, I’ve brought them together.

Both describe a mind and body that may have learned to stay alert.

So the question we’re exploring is:

Why can’t my brain switch off, and why can hearing someone’s voice still trigger anxiety long after the difficult situation has ended?

Before we get into Kathie’s question, the original question box is still open. If there is something about the human brain, emotions or behavior that you have always wondered about, pop your question into the post below. It might become a future Storm Psychology article.

It is a deceptively simple question because “I can’t stop thinking” can mean several different things.

It might mean worry about what could happen next.

It might mean replaying what has already happened.

It might mean looking for problems before they arrive.

It might mean stress, anxiety, grief, trauma, poor sleep, ADHD, depression or several of those things turning up together like an extremely unhelpful committee meeting.

The thinking may also be connected to the body’s alarm system.

The brain is not necessarily producing thoughts for no reason. It may be trying to predict danger, prevent mistakes or understand something confusing.

The problem comes when it never receives a convincing message that the emergency has ended.

A brain that will not switch off is not necessarily broken. It may be working overtime at a job nobody remembers giving it.

Thinking is not always the same as processing

We often call all repetitive thinking “overthinking”, but that can make it sound like a bad habit someone should simply stop.

Sometimes thinking helps us understand something. We reflect, learn from it and eventually move forward.

Other times, the thoughts go round and round without producing anything new.

You replay the same conversation, but you do not reach a new answer.

You examine every detail, but the uncertainty remains.

You ask, “What did I miss?” and then ask it again wearing a slightly different hat.

Psychologists sometimes call this rumination. It means getting stuck thinking repeatedly about distress, its causes and what it might mean.

Rumination can feel useful because the brain is clearly putting in effort. But effort is not always the same as progress.

The American Psychiatric Association explains that rumination can worsen anxiety and depression because it keeps our attention fixed on the problem without helping us move towards a solution. You can read their explanation here.

Sometimes the mind keeps searching because it believes the perfect explanation will finally make the feeling safe.

Unfortunately, the brain can search the same emotional cupboard for hours and still come out holding nothing but an old receipt and a sense of dread.

Why does the brain keep doing this?

Repetitive thinking can be an attempt to regain control.

If something frightening or unpredictable has happened, the mind may review the past to work out how it could have prevented it.

What did I miss?

Should I have noticed sooner?

What if I had said something different?

What if it happens again?

The brain may start believing that enough analysis will protect us next time.

This can make uncertainty feel dangerous in itself.

If the brain cannot guarantee that nothing bad will happen again, it keeps investigating.

That is why some people experience their thoughts as something they are being dragged behind, rather than something they have chosen.

Research describes repetitive negative thinking as a pattern that can appear across different emotional difficulties, rather than belonging to one diagnosis only. A review of repetitive negative thinking is available here.

The body can learn danger too

Kathie’s second question brings us to another part of the puzzle.

Why might hearing someone’s voice still cause anxiety when the difficult situation has stopped?

One possibility is that the voice became connected with periods of fear, shouting, unpredictability or emotional stress.

The voice itself may not be dangerous.

But the nervous system may have learned that the voice can come before something frightening or overwhelming.

This is sometimes called conditioned fear. In simple terms, the brain learns to connect an ordinary thing with something that felt dangerous.

That ordinary thing might be:

• a voice

• a smell

• a room

• footsteps

• a notification sound

• a facial expression

• a particular time of day

The brain notices patterns. It does not always wait for us to consciously decide whether the pattern still applies.

The body does not need a courtroom, a witness statement and seventeen signed forms before it reacts. It notices patterns.

This does not mean someone is imagining the response.

It does not mean they are being dramatic.

And it does not automatically mean they have PTSD.

People can have strong anxiety responses after difficult experiences without meeting the criteria for a specific diagnosis.

It may simply mean that the body has learned to prepare when it notices a familiar reminder.

Why can the voice still feel dangerous?

The thinking part of the brain may know:

“This is only a voice.”

The body may be responding as though it has received a completely different message:

“Something bad may be about to happen.”

That mismatch can feel very confusing.

You may know that the shouting stopped.

You may know that the situation has changed.

You may know that the person is not behaving in the same way now.

But knowing something intellectually does not always update the body immediately.

The National Institute of Mental Health explains that people may continue to feel stressed or frightened after a traumatic event, even when they are no longer in danger. It also notes that many people gradually recover, while PTSD is considered when symptoms continue and significantly interfere with daily life. NIMH information on trauma and PTSD is available here.

The body can remember the pattern of danger even when the conscious mind remembers that the danger has passed.

That is why a voice can become more than a voice.

It can become a warning bell.

Hyper-vigilance means constantly looking out for danger

Another part of this is hyper-vigilance.

That simply means being unusually alert for signs that something might go wrong.

You may watch someone’s tone of voice, facial expression, footsteps, silences or changes in mood.

You may not even realize you are doing it.

Your attention is constantly checking:

Is the atmosphere changing?

Is someone becoming angry?

Did that pause mean something?

Was that sigh ordinary, or was it the beginning of something?

When life has been unpredictable, this kind of checking can feel sensible.

It may once have helped you notice danger early.

The difficulty is that a system built for immediate protection does not always know when to stand down.

It keeps checking because checking used to help.

Hyper-vigilance is exhausting because the brain is trying to prevent the next emergency while remembering the last one.

This can make quiet feel uncomfortable.

It can make a neutral expression seem suspicious.

It can make a small change in someone’s voice feel much bigger than it might to somebody else.

The brain is not only responding to what is happening now. It is comparing the present with old patterns.

Why can thinking and anxiety feed each other?

The mind and body are not separate departments with a sensible email system between them.

They affect each other constantly.

A body sensation can create a frightening thought.

A frightening thought can create more physical anxiety.

That anxiety can then seem to confirm that something is wrong.

The cycle might look like this:

You hear the voice.

Your body tenses.

You notice the tension and wonder why you feel anxious.

Your brain searches for an explanation.

It finds memories of previous fear.

The memories increase the alarm.

The increased alarm makes the voice feel even more threatening.

And suddenly your nervous system has built a tiny theme park called What If Everything Goes Wrong Again?

This is not a conscious decision.

It is a feedback loop.

The more often it happens, the more familiar it can become.

That does not mean it is permanent. It means the brain may need repeated experiences of safety and predictability before the alarm begins to soften.

Stress can make the alarm system more sensitive

Long periods of stress can affect sleep, concentration, mood and our ability to settle.

When we are already worn out, smaller things can feel more important.

The brain has fewer spare resources for calmly checking every signal.

A normal sound can feel intrusive.

A small problem can feel urgent.

A passing thought can become a full investigation.

Researchers studying fear learning have found that stress can make it harder for the brain to learn that a reminder is no longer followed by danger. This review explains the relationship between stress and fear learning.

This does not mean the brain cannot learn safety.

It means recovery is not always as simple as telling yourself to calm down.

The body may need time and repeated evidence.

Does this mean the person is still afraid of that individual?

Not necessarily.

A trigger is not always a complete statement about what someone consciously believes.

Hearing a voice may trigger fear because of what happened around that voice, rather than because the person has decided that the individual is dangerous in every situation.

The nervous system can react to a reminder before the thinking part has worked out what it believes.

This is why people can feel guilty or confused about their own responses.

They may think:

“I love this person.”

“I know things are different now.”

“So why does my body still react?”

Relationships can contain love, fear, anger, exhaustion and compassion at the same time.

One feeling does not automatically cancel another.

Love can understand the present while the body is still protecting itself from the past.

We also need to talk about safety

Understanding a trigger does not mean telling someone to ignore it.

If a person is still being shouted at, threatened, intimidated or exposed to unpredictable behavior, their anxiety may be responding to something that is still happening.

The first question is not always, “How do we make the person less anxious?”

Sometimes it is:

“Is the situation actually safe now?”

A nervous system cannot simply be talked into feeling safe while the threat is still present.

This matters because psychological explanations can accidentally place all the responsibility on the person who is reacting.

We start talking about breathing exercises and challenging thoughts while ignoring the possibility that somebody may still be living in an unsafe situation.

We should not train someone to tolerate danger more efficiently.

If the danger has ended, support may help the nervous system update.

If the danger is continuing, safety and practical help come first.

The aim is not to forget

Some people worry that if their fear reduces, they are somehow dismissing what happened.

But healing does not mean pretending the past was harmless.

The aim is not to erase the memory.

It is to help the brain remember what happened without reacting as though it is happening again.

You can remember the past and still learn that the present is different.

You can understand why a voice became frightening and still gradually discover that hearing it does not always mean danger is coming.

Recovery is not forgetting the storm. It is learning that every cloud is not the beginning of one.

What might help?

The first thing is not to tell yourself off for reacting.

Saying “This is ridiculous” usually adds shame to the anxiety, which is a bit like discovering a small kitchen fire and throwing embarrassment at it.

Instead, try naming what is happening:

“My body has reacted to a reminder.”

That creates a little space between the feeling and the belief that something bad must be happening now.

It may also help to give your brain simple information about the present. Look around the room. Feel your feet against the floor. Notice what is different from the earlier situation.

You are not trying to force the fear away. You are gently reminding your body where you are.

If contact with the person is safe, predictability may help too. Clear boundaries, calmer conversations and knowing what will happen next can give the nervous system new experiences to learn from.

And if the reactions are frequent, exhausting or affecting sleep, relationships or everyday life, it is reasonable to speak to a GP or mental-health professional.

Support does not mean somebody will immediately diagnose you with PTSD. It means you can explore what is happening and what might help.

Therapies such as cognitive behavioral therapy, usually shortened to CBT, can help people understand the links between thoughts, feelings and actions. Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, known as EMDR, can help some people process distressing memories so they feel less immediate.

You do not have to wait until you are falling apart before asking for support.

Sometimes the first step is not making the alarm disappear. It is learning how to hear it without automatically believing there is a fire.

So, Kathie, why can’t your brain switch off?

Because your brain may be trying to protect you.

It may be reviewing the past, scanning the present and preparing for a future emergency that may never arrive.

If frightening experiences repeatedly happened around a particular voice, your nervous system may have learned to treat that voice as a warning.

That response can continue even when the situation has changed.

It does not mean you are weak.

It does not mean you are being dramatic.

It does not automatically mean you have PTSD.

And it does not mean your mind is broken.

It may mean that part of you is still waiting for enough evidence that the emergency is over.

Sometimes the brain does not need to be shouted at for thinking too much. Sometimes it needs to be shown, gently and repeatedly, that it is allowed to stop guarding the door.

Thanks for such an honest question, Kathie.

You asked why your brain never stops, but your second question helped show that thoughts do not exist separately from experience.

Sometimes the mind keeps thinking because the body is still listening for danger.

And sometimes the first step towards quiet is not forcing the thoughts to disappear.

It is helping the nervous system understand that the present is no longer the past.

Below, paid subscribers can build a personal plan for moments when a voice, sound or memory triggers anxiety, including what to notice, what genuinely helps and what to do next.

Before You Go…

If this helped put words around why your brain keeps thinking, or why an ordinary voice can still set off an old alarm, please share it.

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Someone else might need the reminder that an automatic fear response does not mean they are weak, dramatic or broken.

And if you enjoy Storm Psychology and would like to help me keep making psychology feel a little more human, you can…

Buy me a Tea Here.

Before we begin, I know some of you already have a question.

I will answer it somewhere in this post. It might be at the bottom. It could be hiding in the middle. You’ll have to read on and find out.

Sneaky? Possibly.
Effective? You’re still here, .

I have spent a lot of my life trying to see the person behind the diagnosis. I think Substack needs to get better at seeing the person behind the writing too.

A little while ago, I wrote honestly about what growth can look like for a smaller creator. Not because I was giving up, and definitely not because I needed a pep talk, but because numbers only ever show part of the story.

They don’t show the person writing after a full day at work, answering comments while their dinner goes cold or rewriting the same paragraph six times because they care about getting it right.

They don’t show the courage it can take to publish something personal, only to watch it disappear beneath louder posts before it has had much chance to be found.

Over the last year, I’ve met some incredible writers on Substack. Some have thousands of subscribers. Others are creating thoughtful, funny, honest or genuinely beautiful work that passes with barely a ripple.

Visibility and quality are not the same thing. Numbers can tell us how far something traveled, but not how deeply it reached the people who found it. They cannot measure the sentence someone carried away or the moment they quietly thought, “I’m glad somebody finally said that.”

That is where this began.

and I wanted to create something that looked beyond the numbers and noticed the person doing the writing.

Not another list of names accompanied by the word “amazing.” We want to introduce you properly. To tell you what caught our attention, what stayed with us and why we believe each person’s work deserves some of your time.

Marlana is a proper co-author in this, not somebody I’ve roped into holding a clipboard while I run around pointing excitedly at writers. If you know her, you’ll already know how deeply she cares about people feeling seen, heard and welcomed.

Behind every post is a person choosing the words, pressing publish and hoping that what they made might reach someone who needs it.

We cannot make the whole internet stop and pay attention.

But we can stop for a moment.

We can read. We can listen. We can tell somebody, “I saw what you made, and it mattered.”

So today, , we would like to introduce you to a few people we think are worth finding.

: You Don’t Suck at Meditation

Jimmy Warden has been writing Modern Mindfulness with Jimmy since February 2023 and currently has 574 subscribers. But those numbers do not tell you the most important thing about him.

Jimmy is relentless in his drive to help people. He makes mindfulness feel practical and possible, even for those of us whose brains refuse to sit quietly without opening seventeen mental tabs.

His latest post, “You Don’t Suck at Meditation,” challenges the belief that meditation means emptying your mind or achieving perfect calm. Jimmy reminds us that the mind will wander and that noticing it and gently returning is not failure.

The quiet return is the entire practice.

That same patience appears in the way Jimmy treats people. He is consistently kind, encouraging and generous in his interactions with other writers.

If you have ever tried meditation and decided you were terrible at it, Jimmy’s work is a very good place to begin. He might just convince you that you were never failing in the first place.

: ReThinking ADHD

Ron Sterling MD began writing ADHD Explainer in February 2025 and currently has 187 subscribers. A retired psychiatrist who spent 15 years specializing in ADHD, Ron brings together decades of clinical experience, extensive research and a determination to challenge the oversimplified information people are often given.

His 2013 book was built from more than 900 sources, and he now makes the complete book available free because he wants people to have access to the information.

What I value about Ron is how generously he shares his knowledge. He takes people’s questions seriously, contributes thoughtfully to conversations and shows genuine support for other writers.

A little-known fact about Ron is that he is also an excellent photographer. His photography shows a completely different creative side to the man usually found discussing research and rethinking ADHD.

If you want to look beyond the usual bite-sized explanations of ADHD, Ron’s work is absolutely worth exploring. Come for the knowledge, but do not miss the photography while you’re there.

: Building a Place to Belong

Lutherin Chasity Taralom joined Substack in July 2026 and currently has 27 subscribers. She may be new here, but the fantasy world she is sharing has been 29 years in the making.

The Realmshift Universe began with Gargoyles, an animated series that became Lutherin’s safe place and found family during childhood. When that sanctuary disappeared, she began creating a world of her own.

What started as a love letter to something she had lost gradually developed its own characters, mythology and magic. Her latest post, “Sixteen Candles,” offers a free illustrated audio-book prologue to To Belong, introducing readers to Aria and a world where ancient gargoyles and elite hunters collide.

What stayed with me was the reason behind it. This is storytelling born from understanding how much an imaginary world can mean when the real one does not always feel safe.

If you enjoy dark fantasy, paranormal romance and found-family stories, step into the Realmshift Universe. You might find somewhere to belong too.

A little from me...

The last couple of weeks have involved relaunching A Mind Full of Bees, introducing the Hive and making the mildly alarming decision to turn those anxious little creatures into a comic. I have also been continuing Questions from the Storm, rebuilding Storm Psychology’s Instagram and attempting to organize approximately seventeen ideas that all believe they should be written first.

Somewhere among the Bees, psychology rabbit holes and several cups of tea reheated beyond recognition, this collaboration has quietly become one of the things I have been most excited about.

But you have heard enough from me for now.

It is time to hand over to , who has been choosing three writers of her own and, I suspect, has been considerably more organized about it. 😂

Over to you, Marlana...

Thanks, Kel. I’ll take the mic from here.

I spend a lot of time trying to create spaces where people feel safe enough to show up as their whole, authentic selves.

And just like Kel, I’ve become increasingly frustrated with how discovery and distribution work on Substack.

There are incredible humans creating things here every day, and far too often, whether you even encounter them seems to depend on whether an algorithm decides to put them in front of you.

So, instead of continuing to complain about it and trust me, I can complain about it, I decided to put some of that distribution into my own hands.

I can’t control what the algorithm puts in front of you. I can tell you who I think is worth finding.

So that’s what I’m doing.

I want to introduce you to three humans I genuinely enjoy encountering here, in no specific order.

Lynn published her first piece for Writing {unfiltered} on July 7, 2025, and currently has 836 subscribers.

She’s become a familiar face in my little corner of Substack. She shows up. She’s been in The Inner Room. She reads. She engages. She talks to people. We’ve done a collab together, and somewhere along the way, I’ve gotten to know the human behind the stories she shares here.

Lynn writes about her life after having lived enough of it to have some shit to say: memory, aging, family, care-giving, grief, relationships, and plenty of humor woven throughout all of it.

She’s navigating experiences that so many people eventually find themselves facing, and I think there’s something incredibly valuable about finding another human who understands parts of life you may be trying to navigate yourself.

And Lynn is fucking funny.

That part matters, because I don’t want to introduce her only through the heavier things she carries. There are a lot of layers to this woman.

If you haven’t met Lynn yet, start with Better Than Sex: My Shameless Ice Cream Devotion.

Trust me.

Lily published her first piece for Sun-Drenched Table on May 15, 2025, and currently has 168 subscribers.

And Lily makes me happy.

I think she’s actually one of the people I connected with pretty early in my own time here. Every time I encounter something she’s made, there’s something beautiful waiting for me.

Her food always looks fucking incredible. She makes these scrapbook-like visual worlds around seasons, movies, music, food, home, and whatever else she happens to be noticing. She has the ability to take the ordinary things around us and make them feel like something worth paying attention to.

She shows up in The Den too, and I’ve been trying to get her into The Inner Room because the more I see what she creates, the more curious I become about the brain creating it.

The internet gives us plenty of reasons to feel like everything is terrible. I appreciate people who remind me there are beautiful things sitting right in front of us.

Lily does that for me.

If you want to understand why, go spend some time inside My August Non-Negotiables: A Heat Dome Survival Guide.

And then tell me you’re not curious what this woman is going to do with fall.

Anira published her first piece for Diver of the Tides on April 6, 2025, and currently has 457 subscribers.

Anira feels grounding to me.

I had the opportunity to sit down with her in The Inner Room, and she’s somebody I’ve continued enjoying encountering ever since.

She’s spiritual. She pulls cards. There are mushrooms everywhere. Trees, water, plants, little pieces of whatever she notices while she’s outside.

I appreciate that about her.

There’s a softness to the way Anira moves through this space without her feeling disconnected from the complicated shit that comes with actually being human. We’ve connected over some of those things too, including the experience of being the eldest daughter.

She makes me slow down. She makes me notice things. She makes me feel a little more grounded wherever I happen to be.

If that sounds like something you could use more of, spend some time with Finding My Way Back to Joy.

It’s a 24-minute read, so maybe don’t try to inhale the whole thing while you’re standing in line at the grocery store. Take your time instead.

I think Anira’s writing is worth slowing down for.

A little from me…

I’ve also been building a few things of my own that I’m really excited about.

The newest is The Study, a space built around perspective. You can anonymously send me something you’ve been sitting with, struggling with, questioning, or simply want another human perspective on, and I may choose it for a future entry. Your identity stays completely out of it.

The first entry, What If It Was Right Until It Wasn’t, is out now and free for everyone to read. It’s the beginning of what I hope becomes a space where we can look at the things we carry from more than one angle.

And then there’s The Inner Room, my podcast and probably one of my favorite spaces I’ve created. It gives me an excuse to sit across from interesting humans and have the kinds of conversations I actually want to have.

I’m growing The Inner Room beyond Substack, including over on YouTube, and I’m always looking for new voices to step inside.

So if you have a story, perspective, body of work, weird little corner of the internet, or simply something you think we could have a really fucking good conversation about, DM me.

I’d love to meet you.

Before you go...

Please do not become a paid subscriber to either of us because of this post alone. Click our names, read our work and decide whether you genuinely want more of what we create.

What we would really love you to do is visit the writers we introduced today. Read their work, join their conversations and subscribe if something connects with you. A free subscription, thoughtful comment or re-stack can make a much bigger difference than you might realize.

This will be a fortnightly feature, so not being included today does not mean you will not appear next time. Between editions, Marlana and I will continue finding, sharing and re-stacking writers through our subscriber chats and Share Saturday threads. Click here to visit , read her work and join her conversations too.

This is not simply a list. We want readers and writers to find one another and, with any luck, watch a few genuine friendships grow along the way.

If you are featured and would rather not be, just tell us. No awkwardness or interrogation lamp. We will quietly remove your section.

Now, about your name...

Was this post really addressed specifically to you?

Yes and no.

I used a Substack merge tag that places each reader’s first name inside the post. Partly because it catches your attention, obviously. You are still here, so let us not pretend it failed. 😂

But we also wanted you to stop long enough to meet people whose work could easily have passed beneath your scroll.

I am not a witch, I have not been rifling through your personal information, and I did not hand my voice over to Substack’s built-in AI. I switched that off because I am not changing how I sound for anybody, least of all a little robot I have decided is called Dave.

Now that I’ve answered the question, I won’t be answering it again in the comments. If you ask anyway, you’ll receive one polite but deeply knowing like and be gently directed back up here. 😂

If you want to support this project, subscribe to the writers you met, visit both our publications and join the conversations in our chats.

Subscribe now

Please share this post too. Not for impressive numbers, but because it might introduce somebody to a writer they would never otherwise have found.

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There is also a brew button if you genuinely want to use it. Come to think of it, I am absolutely parched.

Buy me a brew ☕

Catch you next time. The kettle’s on. ☕

Others tell us through the things they repeat, refuse or quietly arrange in front of us.

When we focus only on changing the behavior, we can miss the person trying to communicate through it.

The Second Plate is a fictional short story inspired by the small moments I have witnessed throughout my years supporting people. The characters are fictional, but the truth beneath the story is not.

Sometimes the smallest detail tells us everything, if somebody takes the time to notice.

Rose and Arthur had eaten together almost every evening for thirty-two years.

Even when Arthur worked late, Rose waited. Even when they were angry with each other, they sat at the same table. Sometimes they talked until the food went cold. Sometimes they barely spoke at all. It did not matter. Dinner was simply something they did together.

Arthur sat opposite Rose because he liked to see the television through the kitchen doorway. He always stole one of her potatoes, even when there were three left on his own plate, and he filled her glass whenever he filled his.

After he died, Rose stopped eating at the table.

By the time she moved into the supported-living house, this had become one of the many things written about her.

Rose often required encouragement at mealtimes. She could become distressed when asked to eat alone. She sometimes set an additional place, believed to be connected to the loss of her husband.

Every support worker noticed the second plate.

They noticed how carefully Rose placed it opposite her own. They noticed that she added a glass, a fork and one of the blue napkins from the kitchen drawer. They noticed that she would not begin eating while the chair remained empty.

Most evenings, somebody removed it.

“It’s only you tonight, Rose.”

“Arthur isn’t coming, remember?”

“You don’t need this one.”

Nobody was unkind. They spoke softly and gave her time. They reminded her where she was and encouraged her to eat before her food became cold.

Rose never argued with them. She simply watched the second plate being carried back to the cupboard.

Then she stopped eating.

The support worker on the Thursday evening shift noticed something different.

She noticed that Rose never looked towards the front door.

She did not check the clock or ask when Arthur would arrive. She did not speak to the empty chair or put food onto the second plate.

Instead, Rose watched the room.

She watched the support worker find Jacob’s missing headphones beneath the sofa. She watched her help Amira read a letter she had received from the council. She watched her return twice to the kitchen because Leon wanted a different glass and then a different drink.

Each time the support worker passed the table, Rose looked up.

Each time she moved away again, Rose looked down at her untouched dinner.

“Who is the plate for?” the support worker asked eventually.

Rose glanced at the chair opposite her.

“Arthur used to sit there, didn’t he?”

Rose nodded.

The support worker pulled the chair out slightly. “Do you miss having him opposite you?”

Rose looked at her dinner.

“Yes.”

It was the first time anybody had asked her that.

The support worker left the second place exactly as Rose had arranged it. She did not tell her that Arthur was dead. Rose already knew. She had chosen the clothes for his funeral, stood beside his grave and returned to a kitchen containing two chairs and only one person.

Knowing someone is gone does not teach you how to sit where they are missing.

Dinner was unusually chaotic that night. Jacob refused to eat until his headphones had been cleaned. Amira needed help with her medication, and Leon knocked his drink across the floor while reaching for the salt.

The support worker moved between them, carrying plates, wiping tables and answering questions. She reheated one meal, cut up another and made three cups of tea she did not get to finish.

Rose waited beside the window.

Her dinner stopped steaming. The gravy formed a skin around the edge of the plate.

Twice, another member of staff encouraged her to begin.

“You don’t want it to go cold.”

Rose shook her head.

“You’re waiting for Arthur again.”

Rose shook her head more firmly.

The second plate was removed.

Rose stood, took it from the kitchen counter and quietly returned it to the table.

The incident was added to the evening notes.

Rose continued to set a place for her deceased husband and declined her meal despite repeated encouragement.

At half past eight, the house finally became quiet.

The support worker returned to the kitchen and found Rose exactly where she had left her. The meal in front of her was untouched. The second plate remained empty.

“Oh, Rose,” she said. “You’ve waited all this time.”

Rose looked up at her.

The support worker sat in the chair opposite, intending to explain gently that Arthur was not coming.

From there, she could see the doorway to the lounge and the corner of the television beyond it.

Arthur’s place.

She looked down at the empty plate and noticed that Rose had not laid the fork on the side Arthur had used. She had placed it on the other side, the way the support worker set her own cutlery during the rare evenings she managed to eat.

Beside the plate was a mug of tea with no sugar.

Arthur had taken two.

The support worker looked at Rose. “This isn’t for Arthur, is it?”

Rose shook her head.

“I know he can’t come back,” she said. “I just don’t like eating without somebody.”

Her eyes dropped to the support worker’s hands.

“You haven’t eaten either.”

For weeks, the notes had recorded the extra plate. They had recorded Rose’s refusal to eat and reminded every member of staff that Arthur was dead.

Nobody had written that Rose was lonely.

The support worker brought her own dinner from the staff-room fridge and returned to Arthur’s old chair.

Rose straightened the fork in front of her.

“Thank you, Leah,” she said.

Then, for the first time since she had arrived at the house, Rose picked up her fork before somebody asked her to.

Behind The Second Plate

What everyone noticed, and what Leah saw differently

Before you go…

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If it made you feel something, please share it. Someone in your world may need the reminder that what looks like difficult behavior can sometimes be a person trying to communicate something nobody has noticed yet.

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Sometimes helping another person feel seen begins with pulling out a chair.

Sometimes it begins with passing their story on.

Sometimes emotional distance is about stress, learned self-reliance or the way someone protects themselves when life becomes too much.

But understanding why someone withdraws does not mean pretending the distance does not hurt.

Have you ever watched someone apparently disappear while still technically being there?

They have not left. They still care, as far as you know. Nothing dramatic has happened. There has been no enormous argument, no slammed door and no suspicious suitcase sitting in the hallway.

But something has changed.

Messages become shorter. Conversations lose their warmth. Things that once felt easy suddenly feel strangely formal. You ask whether something is wrong and get the answer that somehow explains everything and absolutely nothing at the same time.

“No. Just busy.”

Ah. Busy.

The tiny word capable of carrying approximately seventeen emotional mysteries and absolutely no useful instructions.

Sometimes the hardest kind of distance is not when somebody leaves. It is when they are still there, but you can no longer quite reach them.

This week’s question came from Kaye, who asked:

“Why do some men become emotionally distant from someone they care about when their professional or family responsibilities intensify, and how might cultural differences, like German vs. American expectations around emotional expression and prioritization, influence that shift?”

Before we get into ’s question, the original question box is still open. If there is something about the human brain, emotions or behavior that you have always wondered about, pop your question into the post below. It might become a future Storm Psychology article.

It is a brilliant question because there are several things tangled up inside it.

Can somebody care about you and still withdraw? Can stress make affection harder to show? And can two people care deeply while completely misreading each other because they have learned different ways of handling pressure?

The short answer is yes.

The more annoying answer is that emotional distance can mean very different things. Someone may be overwhelmed, used to handling problems privately, uncomfortable with closeness under stress, or genuinely feeling differently about the relationship.

From the outside, those can look frustratingly similar.

Emotional distance tells you that something has changed. It does not, by itself, tell you why.

Stress can make the world smaller

When life becomes overloaded, our attention does not stay beautifully balanced across every important part of our existence.

Wouldn’t that be lovely? Work crisis handled, family fine, relationship emotionally nourished, laundry folded. Magnificent.

Instead, pressure tends to narrow our focus toward whatever feels most urgent.

Psychologists sometimes describe part of this through dyadic coping, which looks at how stress outside a relationship can spill into the relationship itself.

Work pressure, money worries, parenting, illness or family responsibilities may not begin as relationship problems, but stress is extremely rude about boundaries.

It comes home.

One person may become irritable, another may need more reassurance, while someone else goes quiet and starts trying to solve everything alone.

Stress does not have to start inside a relationship to change how two people experience each other.

External pressure can create emotional distance without either person consciously deciding that what the week really needs is a fresh layer of confusion.

Some people move toward connection. Others move toward control.

When you feel overwhelmed, what do you instinctively do?

Some people reach out. They want to talk, be reassured and feel someone close.

Others do almost the opposite. They want to sort it, fix it and deal with it themselves.

Neither reaction automatically tells you how much they care. It tells you something about how they have learned to manage distress.

For some people, closeness is calming. For others, doing is calming.

Give them a problem and they start organizing, fixing, working, researching or standing in a garage aggressively reorganizing screws.

Sometimes one person reaches for connection while the other reaches for control.

Feelings, meanwhile, have been informed that management will get back to them within five to seven working days.

Attachment can become much louder under stress

This is where attachment can matter.

Attachment patterns are not neat personality boxes, and they are certainly not an internet diagnosis you can perform because somebody took three hours to answer WhatsApp.

But they can help explain why people react differently when stress and closeness collide.

People with more secure attachment are generally more comfortable relying on others. People higher in attachment anxiety may become especially alert to signs of rejection, while those higher in attachment avoidance may cope by becoming more independent, emotionally contained or withdrawn.

Research suggests those avoidant tendencies can become more noticeable under stress, especially when intimacy, support or vulnerability are involved.

Someone may therefore seem warm and connected when life is manageable, then retreat when everything becomes emotionally expensive.

That does not mean the earlier closeness was fake. Their coping strategy may simply become:

Reduce demands. Stay independent. Deal with it yourself.

Sometimes withdrawal is not the absence of feeling. It is the person’s way of containing too much feeling.

Unfortunately, that strategy still leaves someone else standing outside the emotional bunker wondering what on earth just happened.

And then the terrible little dance can begin

Imagine one person becomes stressed and withdraws. Their partner notices the distance and naturally tries to restore connection.

“Are we okay?”
“You seem distant.”
“Can we talk?”

But the withdrawn person already feels overloaded, so the request for reassurance can start to feel like one more emotional demand. They pull back further.

The other person sees more distance, becomes more worried, and reaches harder.

Congratulations. Nobody ordered it, but the relationship has received a complimentary pursue-withdraw cycle.

This does not require a villain. Both people may be trying to feel safe in completely different ways: one through connection, the other through space.

The problem is that each person’s way of feeling safer can accidentally make the other person feel less safe.

And that is how two people who may genuinely care about each other can end up pushing against the exact thing the other needs.

So... is this particularly a male thing?

Sometimes gender socialization may contribute. But biology does not issue every man with an emotional trapdoor at puberty.

Research on traditional masculinity often points to norms around self-reliance, stoicism, toughness and emotional control. Some boys and men grow up receiving very clear messages about what acceptable distress looks like: solve it, handle it, stay useful, do not burden people, do not fall apart.

Even when nobody explicitly says “men don’t cry,” the lesson can arrive in subtler ways. A boy may be comforted for an injury but mocked for fear. Anger is tolerated while sadness feels awkward. Competence earns approval, while needing help can feel like failure.

Over time, someone can become extremely skilled at functioning while having absolutely no idea how to say, “I am frightened, overwhelmed and worried I cannot keep all of this together.”

So instead they say:

“I’m fine.”

And then answer three fewer messages.

Some people are taught how to carry pressure long before they are taught how to share it.

This does not mean men are naturally incapable of emotional communication. It means some men may have learned a version of independence where vulnerability feels risky. Plenty of women learn versions of the same thing too.

Gender can influence the lesson. It does not determine the student.

Quick reader poll

Now for the German-American part

This is where we need to be careful, because culture is useful for understanding patterns and absolutely terrible when used as a personality horoscope.

German does not automatically mean emotionally distant, and American does not automatically mean emotionally expressive.

Research comparing German and European American participants has actually found some results that challenge that stereotype. In certain contexts, Americans were more motivated to avoid negative emotional states, while German participants were more accepting of emotions such as sadness.

So the difference may be less about having fewer emotions and more about different expectations around when emotions should be expressed, what counts as sincere communication, and what somebody believes they should handle privately.

Two people can therefore care deeply while speaking very different emotional languages.

“I don’t want to burden you until I’ve sorted this” may be heard as “You don’t trust me enough to let me in.”

“I need reassurance that we’re okay” may be heard as “You’re giving me another problem to solve.”

Neither interpretation is necessarily what the other person meant.

We do not experience another person’s intentions directly. We experience their behavior, then our brain provides subtitles.

And occasionally those subtitles are absolute rubbish.

Culture is one layer, not the whole lasagna

Country of origin can influence communication, but it sits alongside family upbringing, attachment, previous relationships, personality, gender expectations, work, parenting, loss and what somebody learned about emotions growing up.

Whether feelings were welcomed, mocked, ignored or treated as though discussing sadness might summon a demon can matter just as much as nationality.

Two German people can have completely different emotional styles. Two Americans can too.

Culture can help us ask better questions. It should not be used to announce that we have solved somebody.

It is one layer of the lasagna, not the whole suspiciously complicated dish.

Responsibilities can also change what “care” looks like

Kaye specifically mentioned professional and family responsibilities, and that matters.

When someone feels responsible for children, parents, work, money, an ex-partner or several competing demands, their idea of being a good person can become heavily tied to doing what needs to be done.

That can create a painful mismatch.

They may think, “I am dealing with everything I am responsible for.”

The person they care about may experience, “You have stopped making room for me.”

Both can be true.

Responsibility and emotional presence are not the same thing.

Someone can be genuinely overwhelmed, while the person beside them is genuinely hurt by what that overwhelm has done to the relationship.

We do not have to choose which experience is real.

Understanding it does not mean excusing it

This is the bit I really do not want us to lose.

Psychology can explain behavior so beautifully that we accidentally start using understanding as a crowbar to remove our own needs.

“He’s stressed.”
“He has responsibilities.”
“He’s avoidant.”
“It’s probably cultural.”

Maybe. All of those things might be relevant.

But explanations do not make the impact disappear.

A reason can make behavior understandable without making it sustainable.

Someone can have a perfectly understandable reason for becoming distant and still leave you lonely, confused or unsure where you stand.

Psychology should help us see the situation more clearly, not turn one person into an unpaid detective permanently decoding another adult’s silence.

So how can you tell overload from emotional checkout?

There is no perfect test. Annoying, I know. I checked behind the sofa.

But one useful thing to look for is whether connection still exists somewhere.

Someone who is overwhelmed may communicate less, but they often still give some orientation: “I’m struggling,” “I know I’ve been distant,” or “I can’t talk tonight, but can we speak tomorrow?”

They may not communicate perfectly. The important thing is that you are not expected to navigate entirely by smoke signals.

More concerning is a pattern of prolonged silence, disappearing affection, refusing every attempt to talk, returning only when it suits them, or making you feel unreasonable for noticing the distance.

The question is not whether they ever withdraw. It is what happens afterwards.

Does connection return? Is there repair? Can they talk about what happened? Do your needs still have somewhere to exist too?

Instead of “Do you still care about me?” try asking what changed

When somebody starts moving away, our brain quite reasonably wants the biggest possible answer immediately:

Do you still want me?

But that can feel enormous to someone who is already shutting down. A smaller question is often more useful.

You might ask, “When you’re overwhelmed, do you need less contact, or are you actually feeling differently about us?”

Or simply, “I can understand needing space. What I struggle with is not knowing what the space means.”

Space is not always the problem. Ambiguity often is.

Ask what connection looks like when life is difficult

Relationships cannot only work when both people are well-rested, emotionally articulate and mysteriously free of administrative responsibilities.

That version of adulthood appears to have been cancelled.

So a better question might be:

What is the minimum amount of connection we can maintain when life gets difficult?

Maybe it is one message, a short call, or simply, “Bad day. Not ignoring you.”

Tiny bits of clarity can stop enormous stories growing in the silence.

It is not about demanding constant access. It is about giving the relationship enough information to stay connected.

Needing space and offering reassurance are not opposites. Healthy distance can still contain a signpost.

And if you are the person who withdraws...

This bit is for you too.

You do not need to produce a three-hour emotional TED Talk every time life becomes horrible. But disappearing without explanation leaves the other person carrying the uncertainty you are trying to escape.

Sometimes one sentence is enough:

“I care about you. I’m overloaded and I go quiet when that happens.”

That is enormously different from silence.

If you need space, say so. If you cannot talk now, suggest when you can. And if your feelings really have changed, honesty will hurt less than forcing somebody to slowly work it out through increasingly cold messages.

You are allowed to need space. The other person is allowed to need clarity.

Both needs can exist without anybody becoming the villain.

One question that cuts through a lot of the noise

If somebody repeatedly withdraws under pressure, ask yourself:

When life gets difficult, is there still room for me in this relationship?

The reasons may matter. Stress, attachment, culture and responsibility can all help explain what is happening.

But eventually the relationship has to be lived, not endlessly explained.

Maybe the answer is, “Yes. The room is smaller right now, but I can still feel it.”

Or maybe it is, “No. I only seem to exist when everything else in their life is quiet.”

That distinction matters.

A relationship that only has room for you when life is easy will spend a great deal of adulthood asking you to wait outside.

So, Kaye, can somebody care and still become distant?

Absolutely.

Stress can narrow emotional bandwidth. Some people cope by becoming more independent or withdrawn. Attachment, learned ideas about masculinity, family responsibilities and culture can all shape how someone behaves when life becomes overwhelming.

But none of those things can tell us exactly what one individual person feels.

And there is another half to the answer.

Care is an internal state. Relationships are experienced through behavior.

Someone may feel enormous affection privately, but the person beside them cannot live inside that private feeling.

They experience the calls, the words, the reassurance, the silence, the repair and the choices that actually reach them.

Both sides matter.

You can believe that someone cares about you and still decide that the way they disappear when life gets difficult is too painful for you.

That is not a failure of empathy.

Sometimes it is what empathy looks like when you finally include yourself.

Thanks for such a thoughtful question, Kaye. You somehow managed to fit attachment, stress, masculinity, culture, family systems and relationship communication into one question.

Absolutely no pressure then. 😂

Paid subscribers can keep going with the practical Emotional Distance Decoder below.

A practical 8-question check for working out what changed, what might be stress, and what you actually need.

Before You Go…

If this helped put words around that strange experience of somebody going emotionally quiet when life gets loud, please share it.

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Someone else might need the reminder that distance does not automatically mean the love disappeared, but they are still allowed to ask what the distance means.

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I’ll turn it into tea and continue asking the human brain why it insists on making relationships considerably more complicated than necessary. 😂

Evidence and further reading

This article is written in plain English, but the psychology is grounded in research on attachment, stress, masculinity and cultural differences in emotional expression:

1. Jeffry A. Simpson and W. Steven Rholes, “Adult Attachment, Stress, and Romantic Relationships.” A review showing how attachment patterns, including withdrawal associated with avoidance, can become more visible under stress.

2. Mariana K. Falconier and Roman Kuhn, “Dyadic Coping in Couples: A Conceptual Integration and a Review of the Empirical Literature.” Research on how stress outside a relationship can spill into the way partners communicate and support one another.

3. “Support or stress? How attachment and relationship dynamics associate with acute psychosocial stress in the presence of the romantic partner.” Research examining attachment, relationships and responses to acute stress.

4. Research on traditional masculinity norms and men’s help-seeking. Studies repeatedly link norms such as self-reliance, stoicism and emotional restriction with greater reluctance to express distress or seek support.

5. Koopmann-Holm and Tsai, “Focusing on the Negative: Cultural Differences in Expressions of Sympathy.” Research comparing German and European American responses to negative emotion and emotional expression.

6. “A Cross-Cultural Study on Emotion Expression and the Learning of Social Norms.” Research showing that emotional display rules can differ across Germany, Greece, the United States and Israel.

These studies describe patterns across groups. They cannot tell us why one particular person becomes distant, and culture should never be used as a shortcut for understanding an individual.

There is a meeting taking place inside your mind.

Nobody planned it. The chairs are mismatched. The agenda has gone missing. Someone has brought biscuits, and somebody else is already quietly worried there will not be enough.

This is the Hive.

There will be magic, biscuits, questionable meeting minutes, and the occasional Bee being wildly dramatic. Not because difficult feelings are a joke, but because sometimes humor gives us enough room to look at them.

The Bees are not separate from us. They are the little parts of us that appear when life gets loud.

The part that worries and makes a list.

The part that gets frustrated when nothing makes sense.

The part that looks after everybody else.

The part that makes a joke because the feelings have become a bit too big to carry quietly.

None of these Bees are bad. They are all trying to help, even when their ideas are slightly questionable and involve turning a small problem into a full-scale internal meeting.

This is the first introduction.

Come in. There are biscuits.

Most of us have a worried part, a frustrated part, a caring part, and a part that makes a joke at exactly the wrong moment. They do not take turns neatly, either. Sometimes they all show up before lunch and start making decisions.

That does not mean there is something wrong with you.

It means you are human. Different feelings appear for different reasons, especially when life gets busy, confusing, unfair, or simply a bit much.

We are going to meet the Bees one by one, find out what makes them buzz, and work out what might help them settle.

First up is Mallow, who is currently treating biscuit distribution as a full and balanced meal.

The one who checks whether everyone is okay. The one who remembers the biscuits, the tea, the birthday, the thing you mentioned three weeks ago when you were having a bad day.

Looking after people can be a lovely thing. But when Mallow is always on duty, it can become very easy to forget that you are one of the people worth looking after too.

Sometimes Mallow does not need a huge solution. Sometimes they just need someone to say, “We saved you one.”

A biscuit. A break. A bit of help. Permission to stop holding everything together for five minutes.

Next, we meet Pip, who has some thoughts about the plan. And possibly a backup plan for the plan.

When something feels uncertain, Pip starts collecting details, making lists, and trying to think three steps ahead. Sometimes that helps. A plan can make a big day feel a little less wobbly.

But Pip cannot plan every surprise away. And if Pip has been busy for too long, even a small decision can start to feel like it needs seventeen folders and a weather report.

Pip is not trying to spoil the day with all those “what ifs?” Pip is trying to keep us safe.

Sometimes what helps is one small plan, one calm person, and the reminder that we only need to work out the next step.

Now, let’s meet Rumble, who has noticed that nobody has actually followed the agenda.

A plan changing without warning, rules that do not make sense, too many people talking at once, being asked to just “go with it” when nobody has explained where we are going. That can make Rumble buzz very loudly.

Anger can feel big, but it rarely arrives from nowhere. Sometimes it is telling us that something feels confusing, unfair, unsafe, or simply too much.

Rumble does not always need to be told to calm down. Sometimes he needs someone to ask, “What has changed?” “What is unclear?” or “What do we need to do next?”

And sometimes, once the plan has been rescued and everybody has had a biscuit, the Hive needs someone to make everyone laugh.

That is where Fizz comes in.

Not because Fizz does not care. Often, it is because Fizz cares so much that they are trying to give everyone a little more room to breathe.

A joke does not make a hard feeling disappear. But sometimes it helps us sit beside it long enough to say, “This is difficult,” instead of carrying it alone.

That is what the Hive is for.

Not getting rid of our feelings. Not pretending they are not there. Just learning to notice who has turned up, and what they might need.

Maybe Pip needs one small next step.
Maybe Rumble needs something explained clearly.
Maybe Mallow needs someone to remember them too.
Maybe Fizz needs us to laugh, take a breath, and carry on.

And maybe we all need a biscuit.

If this gives you a way to talk about a feeling with a child, a friend, a class, someone you love, or even yourself, take it with you.

Put it on a board. Read it together. Share it with whoever might need another way into the conversation.

There are more Bees to meet.

But for tonight, the biscuits are safe.

So, what am I doing with all of this?

This post is staying completely free. I wanted you to be able to meet the new Hive properly, read the full story, and decide whether these slightly odd little Bees might be useful to you too.

Some of you will remember the original Name the Bees. This is its next chapter. Same noisy minds. Same need to make difficult things feel less lonely. But this time, the Bees get to step into real-life moments and tell bigger stories.

Not every Bee will look the same all the way through this journey. As we meet them properly, some may take us somewhere unexpected. Some magical. Some beautiful. Some, frankly, a little terrifying.

That is part of the point.

The Bees are us. They are the worried part, the caring part, the frustrated part, the part that laughs when the feelings are getting too big. I want to give those parts a voice, bring a little humor into serious things, and challenge myself to tell stories in a completely different way.

From the next post onward, every article will still include free comic pages alongside the full written story. But paid subscribers will receive the complete comic edition inside each post, with every page and the whole journey through the Hive.

So yes, this is me being a tiny bit shameless now: if you would like to help me keep building this strange, rainy little world, paid subscriptions are still 20% off for a little while longer.

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If a subscription is not your thing but you would like to support the work, there is also a Buy Me a Tea button on the way out. Because apparently writing a magical Bee comic requires an unreasonable amount of tea.

Support the Hive

Most of all, I would genuinely love to know what you think. Which Bee feels familiar? What would you like them to explore? And would you share this with someone who might need a different way to talk about what is happening inside their mind?

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The Hive is only just getting started.

Content note: This article discusses public shaming, distress, suicide and death.

This is about the moment a concern turns into a judgement, and a judgement turns into a crowd.

I have watched people refuse to read someone’s work because they had already decided it was written by AI.

No evidence. No conversation. Sometimes, not even a detector score.

Just a feeling. A suspicion. A decision made before the person’s actual words had been given a chance.

And that is what has been sitting with me.

Because this is not only about AI.

It is about what happens whenever one fragment of information becomes enough for us to decide who a whole person is.

A score is not a verdict.

A suspicion is not a fact.

And a person does not become less human because we have decided their story fits neatly into one we already know.

A percentage is not a person

Let’s start with AI detection, because it is part of why I am writing this.

AI-generated work is a real issue. Academic integrity matters. People should not be able to pass off someone else’s work as their own.

But detecting AI use is not as simple as a percentage on a screen.

OpenAI withdrew its own text classifier because of its low accuracy. Turnitin says its AI-writing model can misidentify human writing, AI writing and AI-paraphrased writing, and should not be used as the sole reason to take action against a student.

Research has also found that some AI detectors can be biased against people who write English as an additional language.

That does not mean every concern is meaningless.

It means a concern should be the beginning of a proper conversation, not the end of one.

A person should be able to explain their work. They should be able to show their drafts, notes, process and understanding. They should be met with evidence, curiosity and fairness.

Not a percentage treated as a verdict before a person has been heard.

A friend of mine was once pulled up for plagiarism while I was doing my degree. Some citations had been missed. That needed correcting, of course it did.

But missing citations is not automatically the same as deliberately stealing somebody’s work.

This is the bit we keep losing.

There is a difference between identifying an error and deciding you know somebody’s whole character.

A mistake may need correcting.
It does not always need a crowd.

The difference between accountability and cruelty

I have thought a lot about where the line is.

Accountability is not pretending nothing happened.

It is not protecting people from consequences.

It is not telling people who have been harmed to stay quiet so everybody else can feel comfortable.

Accountability asks:

• What actually happened?

• What evidence is there?

• Who has been affected?

• What needs to change?

• What would a fair and proportionate response look like?

Cruelty does something else.

Cruelty takes an action, an allegation or a mistake and stretches it until it becomes somebody’s entire identity.

It either enjoys the humiliation, or stops caring that humiliation has become the point.

It treats uncertainty as guilt.

It treats an apology as proof somebody is weak, and silence as proof somebody is guilty.

It does not leave room for repair, learning, context or humanity.

And very often, it does not even make anybody safer.

Accountability is a process.
Cruelty is a performance.

What happens when a crowd takes over

This is where psychology comes in.

Psychologists call one part of this the fundamental attribution error. It sounds horrendous, like a Victorian diagnosis involving a fainting couch, but it means something quite simple.

When somebody else does something we dislike, we are quick to see it as proof of who they are.

We think, “They are dishonest,” “They are selfish,” or “They are a bad person.”

We are much less likely to wonder whether fear, pressure, poor communication, missing context, overwhelm or a genuine mistake might also be part of the story.

Then there is social proof.

When lots of people sound certain, certainty can start to feel like evidence. A hundred comments repeating the same opinion can feel convincing, even when none of the people commenting actually know the full story.

And because each person only adds one like, one share or one comment, it can be easy to feel as though our own contribution does not matter.

But the person receiving it does not experience one tiny action.

They experience the weight of all of it.

Psychology does not excuse cruelty. It helps us understand how ordinary people can become part of it without stopping to notice.

Jason Arday: when a person becomes a symbol

Jason Arday was appointed Professor of Sociology of Education at Cambridge in 2023, becoming the university’s youngest Black professor.

His story mattered to people. He spoke about growing up autistic, being unable to speak until he was 11, and learning to read and write at 18. He went on to gain a PhD, teach at several universities and become a prominent academic writing about race, inequality and education.

Then serious questions were raised about parts of his academic work, qualifications and public biography.

On 5 August 2026, Cambridge announced an investigation into new information about his qualifications and honorary appointments, alongside ongoing complaints about academic misconduct. Jason resigned that day. He denied plagiarism allegations and said the accusations, speculation and public commentary had taken a profound toll on him and those he loved.

There were genuine questions to answer, and any investigation needed to be fair and thorough. But a fair process is not the same as thousands of strangers turning somebody’s life into a forensic hobby.

On 14 August, Jason Arday was found dead at his home in south London, aged 41. Police said his death was being treated as unexpected but not suspicious. No public cause of death has been confirmed.

That matters.

We should not invent a cause of death.

We should not claim that one event, one article, one argument or one person caused it.

But we can still look at the environment around him and ask what happens when a person becomes a public object lesson.

Jason’s work, disability, background and claims were being picked apart by people who did not know him. To some, he was a symbol of hope. To others, a symbol in a wider argument about universities, diversity and standards. When somebody becomes a symbol, people stop allowing them to be complicated.

Caroline Flack: when a legal case becomes public theater

Caroline Flack’s story is different. It should not be treated as though it is identical to Jason Arday’s.

In December 2019, Caroline was charged with assault by battery following an alleged domestic incident involving her boyfriend, Lewis Burton. She pleaded not guilty. Her trial was due to begin in March 2020.

Domestic abuse must always be taken seriously.

Fame and popularity do not make an allegation disappear, and a partner not supporting a prosecution does not automatically mean there is no case. But Caroline was never convicted, and the facts were never tested in court.

Instead, the months before her death became a relentless public story.

She stood down from Love Island. Her name was everywhere. Her private life became daily material for headlines, judgement and speculation.

A Guardian analysis found 387 print stories mentioning Caroline in the six months before her death, with negative coverage rising sharply after she was charged.

Caroline died by suicide in February 2020.

At the inquest, the coroner found that she had been struggling with fluctuating mental health, and concluded that knowing the prosecution would proceed and facing the anticipated media publicity were central to the circumstances of her death.

That does not mean one headline, one tweet or one person caused her death.

Suicide is complex. It is not a neat equation where we can point to one thing and say, “That did it.”

But neither should complexity become an excuse to ignore the impact of relentless public scrutiny.

Everyone affected deserved due process. Caroline also deserved to be treated as a human being, not an endless source of public spectacle.

These are examples, not the whole story

Jason Arday and Caroline Flack are two public examples.

Every day, people are publicly judged in workplaces, schools, family chats, friendship groups, local Facebook pages and WhatsApp conversations. A mistake, allegation, clumsy comment or overwhelmed response can become a story that moves faster than the person at its center.

Then the story starts moving faster than they can.

And not everybody can keep up with it in the same way.

Someone living with anxiety, depression or trauma may already be carrying fear, shame or the belief that they are one mistake away from being rejected.

An autistic person may find sudden conflict, uncertainty, information overload or a flood of messages particularly overwhelming.

Someone with ADHD may react quickly while frightened or overloaded, then spend days replaying every word they said.

Someone with a learning disability may need more time, clearer information or support to understand what is happening and explain their side.

That does not make anyone weak.

It means we need to stop pretending everybody has the same emotional resources, support network, processing speed and ability to defend themselves while people are talking about them.

Some will go quiet. Others will say the wrong thing, or fail to explain themselves quickly enough for an audience that has already decided what their silence means. And some will carry it long after everybody else has found a new story.

When fear is mistaken for aggression

I have seen this in my own work.

Details are deliberately left out to protect the person involved, but I have watched somebody become flustered and frightened while trying desperately to explain themselves.

The more overwhelmed they became, the more others read their behavior as aggression.

They did not see the fear.

They saw the raised voice, the repetition, the urgency and the struggle to get a point across.

So the response escalated.

More people came in. More pressure. More misunderstanding.

And what began as somebody feeling frightened and unheard risked becoming a label that could follow them far beyond that one conversation.

That is what happens when we see only behavior and not the person underneath it.

Fear can look like anger.

A shutdown can look like defiance.

Panic can look like manipulation.

A person struggling to communicate can look like a person refusing to cooperate.

Sometimes the most important question is not:

“Why are they behaving like this?”

It is:

“What might be happening that I cannot see?”

Why cruelty spreads so easily

Anger is a volcano.

It erupts. It is loud. It is magnificent in the most frightening way. Everybody turns to look.

Patience is more like hills and valleys.

It is quieter. It takes longer. It holds whole lives together without anybody applauding it.

And online, the volcano nearly always wins.

Research suggests that when social-media users receive likes and shares for moral outrage, they are more likely to express more of it later. Platforms teach us what gets attention.

Online, the sharpest, most certain and most cutting comments tend to get noticed. People can start to confuse attention with importance, and volume with being right.

Some people do join in deliberately. They enjoy the power, the attention or the chance to hurt somebody without having to see the impact.

Others genuinely believe they are helping. They think they are speaking up. They are scared of seeming as though they do not care.

And sometimes speaking up is necessary.

Say your piece.

Ask your question.

Challenge what needs challenging.

Just do it with kindness.

Just remember that speaking up does not require you to become cruel.

Shame is not the same as guilt

Guilt says:

“I did something bad.”

Shame says:

“I am bad.”

Guilt can lead to repair. It can make somebody face what they have done, apologize, change and do better.

Shame attacks the whole self.

It says there is no route back. No context. No future. No life beyond the worst thing people know about you.

Public shaming is especially cruel because it does not only say, “You did something wrong.”

It says, “Everyone can see you are the sort of person who deserves to be rejected.”

For somebody who is already struggling, isolated, frightened or convinced they are too much, that can feel unbearable.

When distress becomes inescapable, a person can start to believe there is no route out.

That is why we need to be careful.

Not because everybody is responsible for everybody else’s mental health.

But because compassion costs us very little, and cruelty can cost somebody everything.

We are not public executioners

I know the justice system does not always get things right.

I know institutions fail people. I know victims are not always believed. I know some people with power avoid consequences.

That is frustrating. It can make public judgement feel like the only available form of justice.

But a crowd does not become fairer because it is bigger.

It does not become more informed because it is louder.

And it does not become justice just because it is angry.

We do not know every fact.

We do not know who is reading the comments at two in the morning.

We do not know what else somebody is carrying.

The accused has family. The person making an allegation has family. Witnesses have family. People are not chess pieces in an argument we are enjoying from a sofa.

Our responsibility is not to decide that nothing matters.

It is to hold enough compassion for everyone involved to let the facts be found properly.

What we can do instead

Compassion does not mean pretending serious concerns do not matter.

It means responding in a way that is more likely to create safety, truth and repair, rather than more noise.

We can slow down.

We can read the actual work, the actual statement or the actual evidence before sharing somebody else’s opinion of it.

We can be precise.

Instead of saying, “They are a terrible person,” we can ask, “What did they do?”, “What do we actually know?” and “What needs to happen next?”

We can let silence mean silence.

A person who is quiet may be getting legal advice, trying to understand what has happened, having a panic attack, protecting their family, or simply not knowing what to say. We do not get to turn their lack of public response into proof.

We can take serious concerns to the right place.

If somebody may have caused harm, there may need to be reporting, safeguarding, workplace procedures, legal action, boundaries or consequences. Those things matter.

But that is different from turning their name into entertainment.

We can support people who have been harmed without using them as weapons in an argument.

And we can choose not to add weight to something just because everybody else is doing it.

One like. One repost. One joke. One “just saying”. It can all feel tiny from the outside.

It does not always feel tiny to the person at the center of it.

Sometimes the kindest and most responsible thing we can do is refuse to become part of the spectacle.

Before you join in

Before we share, comment, like, repost or watch another person being pulled apart, perhaps we need to ask:

• Do I know this is true, or do I know it has been repeated?

• Am I talking about an action, or deciding who this person is forever?

• Is this helping anyone, or am I simply adding weight to the noise?

• What might their silence actually mean?

• Would I say this if they were sitting in front of me?

• If this were someone I loved, would I still think this was a fair thing to say?

The person at the center of the story is loved by somebody. They may need to answer serious questions, repair harm or face consequences. But they are still someone’s child, parent, partner, sibling, friend or colleague. They are still a person. And that should change how we speak.

If this has brought something up for you, Samaritans are available in the UK and Ireland, day or night, on 116 123.

Sources and further reading

• OpenAI: AI-text classifier withdrawn because of low accuracy

• Turnitin: limitations of its AI Writing Report

• Research on AI-detector bias against non-native English writers

• The Guardian: Cambridge investigation and Jason Arday’s resignation

• The Guardian: reporting on Jason Arday’s death

• Crown Prosecution Service statement on the Caroline Flack case

• The Guardian: analysis of media coverage before Caroline Flack’s death

• The Guardian: Caroline Flack inquest reporting

• Research on how social reward can amplify moral outrage online

• Samaritans: guidance on talking about suicide safely

Have you ever spent far too long gathering evidence for someone?

Not a suspicious Facebook graphic made by a man called Gaz. Proper evidence. Reliable sources. Actual research. You arrange it neatly, explain it clearly and place it in front of them like a beautifully prepared factual buffet.

And they look at the whole thing and say, “Well, I still think…”

Suddenly the goalposts have put on trainers and sprinted into another county.

This week’s question came from :

“Why can some people not change their opinions despite being shown evidence that those opinions are incorrect? Is there a brain chemistry aspect to it, or is it some old built-in mechanism from an older time?”

Before we get into Seb’s question, the original question box is still open. If there is something about the human brain, emotions or behavior that you have always wondered about, pop your question into the post below. It might become a future Storm Psychology article.

It is a cracking question because the easy answer is usually, “They are stubborn,” followed by a slightly ruder opinion about their intelligence.

But the real answer is more interesting.

There is no single brain chemical that makes people reject facts, and there is no ancient switch in the skull marked IGNORE EVIDENCE. Usually, several very normal bits of human psychology are piling on top of each other.

We hate feeling foolish, we want to belong, and sometimes an opinion becomes so tangled up with who we are that changing it feels like pulling out a load-bearing wall.

Facts do not arrive in an empty brain. They walk into a crowded room full of old beliefs, loyalties, memories, fears and one offended ego asking who invited them.

Sometimes a belief is doing a job

Some beliefs are easy to change.

If I think Tesco closes at six and you show me it closes at five, I will probably thank you and leave earlier. My identity has not been shattered by the opening hours.

Other beliefs are holding up much more.

They may be tied to someone’s family, politics, religion, job, community or idea of what makes them a good person. They might protect a decision that person made years ago.

Changing the belief may also mean admitting:

• I trusted the wrong person.

• My group might be wrong.

• I defended something harmful.

• I said all of this publicly, with confidence, and other humans have receipts.

That is a much bigger psychological bill than simply saying, “Ah, fair enough.”

This is where cognitive dissonance comes in. Big phrase, simple meaning: it is the horrible mental discomfort we feel when two important things do not fit together.

“I am a sensible person” does not sit comfortably beside “I ignored the evidence for three years and called everyone else an idiot.”

Something has to move.

The person could change their belief. Or they could dismiss the source, find one exception, attack the messenger or decide the whole system is corrupt.

The brain does not always choose the truest explanation. Sometimes it chooses the one that hurts the least.

They may genuinely feel reasonable. That is what makes it so maddening.

Confirmation bias gives friendly facts an easier interview

Confirmation bias means we are more likely to notice, trust and remember information that supports what we already believe.

We may read something we agree with and think, “Exactly!” before checking where it came from. Then we inspect anything that disagrees with us like a furious customs officer looking for undeclared cheese.

The friendly evidence gets asked, “When can you start?” The conflicting evidence must explain a twelve-year gap in its employment history and provide six references.

Then we have motivated reasoning. This is when our thinking quietly changes jobs. Instead of asking, “What is most likely to be true?” it starts asking, “How can I keep believing what I want to believe?”

Our preferences affect which arguments feel convincing and how hard we work to explain awkward evidence away. Being intelligent does not make anyone immune. A clever brain can examine its own beliefs brilliantly, or become a very talented defense lawyer for them.

When “I believe this” becomes “this is who I am”

The hardest beliefs to change are often the ones carrying the most identity.

If an opinion tells someone who their people are or what kind of person they are, evidence can feel personal. Changing their mind might cause conflict, cost them status or mean becoming “one of them.”

None of us checks every medicine, news report or study ourselves. We choose who to trust because one small brain cannot personally verify the entire enormous world.

The problem starts when loyalty becomes the test of truth.

This may be part of the older mechanism Seb wondered about. Belonging and trusted groups have long been useful to humans. There is no ancient “tribe brain” switch, but trust, belonging and self-protection can make beliefs hard to shift.

Then social media comes along and gives those systems an industrial leaf blower.

So, is it brain chemistry?

Not in the neat, one-chemical-causes-one-behavior way.

All thinking involves the brain, but a colorful blob on a scan has not solved the argument. Research suggests the brain may handle “this says something about me and my people” differently from “Tesco closes at five.” Studies in 2016 and 2026 found similar patterns, although the newer one did not repeat every earlier finding.

So be wary of claims that facts simply send the brain into fight-or-flight. Attention, emotion, identity and how we judge new information can all be involved.

Confidence matters too. Research suggests that once we feel very certain, we may give supporting information more weight and let conflicting information have less influence.

Confidence and correctness regularly turn up wearing matching outfits, but they are not the same thing.

Quick reader poll

Right, tea topped up? Because we all do this

It is much easier to spot bias in someone whose opinion annoys us. Their bias is wearing a flashing hat. Ours feels like common sense.

But all of us become more defensive when a belief is protecting something important.

It might be the expensive thing we called a brilliant investment, the person we kept making excuses for, or the belief that we can spot manipulation from three streets away. Even painful beliefs get protected. Someone who feels incapable may dismiss every success as luck.

A belief does not have to make us happy to make us feel safe. Familiar misery can still feel safer than unfamiliar hope.

Nobody escapes the psychological frisking here, including me. Rude, frankly.

Facts still matter

You may have heard of the backfire effect, the idea that correcting someone can make them believe the false thing even more strongly.

That can happen, but it is nowhere near as automatic as the internet made it sound.

Across five experiments with more than 10,000 people, corrections generally moved beliefs closer to the facts. But changing one fact does not always change the wider opinion. Someone may accept the number and still distrust the organization.

So yes, keep sharing accurate information. Just do not assume that twelve more links will fix a problem that is not really about missing facts.

Is it a fact gap, a trust gap or an identity threat?

When a conversation gets stuck, ask what kind of problem you are actually dealing with.

1. A fact gap

They are missing information and open to evidence. One clear explanation or reliable source may genuinely help.

2. A trust gap

The disagreement is about who can be believed. Twelve more links from a source they distrust will do very little.

3. An identity threat

Accepting the evidence would threaten pride, belonging or their story about who they are. Facts still matter, but humiliation usually makes people defend themselves harder.

You are not pretending that false information is equally valid. You are working out which door is locked before repeatedly kicking the letterbox.

So what actually helps?

You cannot force another person to change their mind. Sadly, there is no emergency button hidden behind their left ear. But you can make a useful conversation more likely.

Ask before you unload the evidence cupboard

Try, “What part of this feels wrong to you?” or “Is there a source we would both trust?”

Their answer tells you whether you are dealing with missing facts, missing trust or something that feels personal. It also saves you from delivering seventeen links to somebody who stopped listening at link two.

Correct one thing at a time

If ten claims are tangled together, choose the one that matters most. Give one clear correction, explain why the source is reliable and pause.

A factual avalanche may feel thorough to you. To someone already defensive, it can feel like being buried alive by footnotes.

Do not turn changing their mind into public humiliation

Mocking someone may win the performance, but it rarely makes reconsidering feel safe. Leave them a dignified way to say, “I hadn’t seen that before,” without demanding a full courtroom confession and a tiny apology hat.

This is not about being endlessly gentle with harmful nonsense. It is about deciding whether you want a satisfying take-down or the best chance of the information getting through. Sometimes you cannot have both.

Give the thought somewhere to go

People often reconsider later, away from the heat of the conversation. Say what you need to say, then leave some space. Silence is not always failure. Sometimes the brain is doing its paperwork in the back office.

One question before you enter the Argument Swamp

Ask:

What evidence would change your mind?

Ask it of yourself too, otherwise it is just a smug little weapon, and we already have enough of those.

If they can describe evidence they would accept, there may still be a useful conversation. If the honest answer is “nothing,” the belief is unfalsifiable. That simply means no possible evidence is allowed to prove it wrong.

At that point, you can stop auditioning new facts for a role that does not exist.

A softer version is: “How certain are you from 0 to 100, and what might move you by ten points?”

Ten points feels less like demanding a full surrender. It gives uncertainty somewhere to sit down, which is often where thinking starts again.

And if it is your belief being challenged, use exactly the same question. Notice the urge to defend yourself, check the source when you are calmer and ask what being wrong would seem to say about you.

Being wrong about something does not make you foolish. Refusing to look because being wrong feels unbearable is where the trouble starts.

Know when to stop

Someone refusing to reconsider does not mean your explanation failed. You may be fixing a fact gap while they are defending their family, past choices or sense of being a good person.

That does not make every belief respectable, or mean you must stay in endless conversations with someone committed to misunderstanding you. Sometimes the best thing you can do is share the evidence once, make your boundary clear and step away.

Changing your mind is not proof that you were stupid. It is proof that the new information got through.

The aim is not to have no firm beliefs. It is to hold them firmly enough to act, but loosely enough to revise when reality taps us on the shoulder.

Preferably before reality has to fetch a chair and whack us with it.

Thanks for another brilliant question, Seb. And , if this made your brain pull one guilty little face, mine did too. None of us escaped this one. 😂

Before You Go…

If this helped you understand why facts sometimes bounce off the human brain like peas off a toddler, please share it. Someone else might need the reminder that another person refusing to reconsider does not mean they explained it badly.

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Evidence and further reading

This article is written in plain English, but the psychology is grounded in the following research:

1. Leon Festinger and James M. Carlsmith (1959), “Cognitive Consequences of Forced Compliance.” A classic study that helped establish cognitive dissonance. Read the paper

2. Lee Ross, Mark R. Lepper and Michael Hubbard (1975), “Perseverance in Self-Perception and Social Perception.” This study showed how impressions can survive even after the evidence behind them has been discredited. PubMed

3. Charles S. Taber and Milton Lodge (2006), “Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs.” This research found that people can examine opposing arguments more harshly than supportive ones. Journal page

4. Dan M. Kahan, Ellen Peters, Erica Cantrell Dawson and Paul Slovic (2017), “Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government.” Participants interpreted the same numbers differently when the topic became politically charged. Cambridge University Press

5. Paul Connor, Emily Sullivan, Mark Alfano and Nava Tintarev (2020), “Motivated Numeracy and Active Reasoning in a Western European Sample.” This later study found motivated interpretation but challenged the idea that more numerate people always become more divided. Cambridge University Press

6. Jonas T. Kaplan, Sarah I. Gimbel and Sam Harris (2016), “Neural Correlates of Maintaining One’s Political Beliefs in the Face of Counterevidence.” A small brain-imaging study of strongly held political and non-political beliefs. Scientific Reports

7. Małgorzata Kossowska and colleagues (2026), “Neural Correlates of Belief Change in Political and Non-Political Domains.” This larger preregistered study repeated some, but not all, of the earlier brain-imaging findings. Scientific Reports

8. Max Rollwage and colleagues (2020), “Confidence Drives a Neural Confirmation Bias.” In a controlled task, higher confidence made supporting information more influential than conflicting information. Nature Communications

9. Thomas Wood and Ethan Porter (2019), “The Elusive Backfire Effect.” Across more than 10,000 people, factual corrections generally improved accuracy rather than making false beliefs stronger. Political Behavior

Yellow First

Ana had been in the care home for six days, long enough for the staff to decide she didn’t understand very much. They spoke slowly around her.

“Good girl, Ana.”

“Hands down.”

“Do you want your iPad?”

Ana understood every word. She just didn’t answer.

Instead she watched. The humming lights in the hallway. Chairs scraping across the dining room floor. The biscuit tin opening when someone thought nobody noticed.

On the seventh day a support worker stood in the doorway of her room, small, red hair tied back, a mug of tea already going cold in her hand.

“Who’s this?” she said, smiling. “Is this our new girl?”

Ana kept coloring.

Yellow first. Always yellow first.

The woman stepped inside and looked at the page. “That’s beautiful.”

Most staff filled silence with instructions. This one didn’t. She sat across the room instead, sipping her tea and watching quietly.

After a while she reached into the pouch at her waist and took out a pencil and a scrap of paper.

“Is this okay?” she asked.

Ana didn’t answer.

The woman began to draw. Not the rushed scribbles the others made. A tractor.

Ana’s eyes flicked sideways.

The woman colored slowly, carefully, like the lines mattered.

The house hummed around them.

Ana watched.

Then she pushed the yellow pencil across the bed.

The woman looked up from the pencil.

Ana nodded once and reached for a new color.

After reading ’s article, The Plan We Never Made, I found myself thinking about what would happen if someone brought that same story through the doors of the GP practice where I work.

This companion piece was written with Marlana’s knowledge and links to her account of medication dependence with her permission.

The Reflection Room

The Plan We Never Made

I remember the first time I took Xanax…

Read more

a month ago · 24 likes · 21 comments · Marlana aka Outtamydamnmind

What would we do? Where would they go? Who would help them?

My answer was reassuringly simple: they would not need to know.

They would only need to come through the first door and tell us what was happening. From there, we could begin helping them find the clinical support, medication review, mental-health care and specialist services they needed.

Because navigating the system should be our job, not theirs.

Marlana’s article asks what happens when the medication that helped you live with anxiety becomes something you are trying to leave behind.

This companion piece is my attempt to answer that question from the other side of the desk: what should happen when somebody asks for help, how the system can respond, and why no patient should be expected to arrive already knowing which service owns their problem.

The First Door Should Be Enough

For us, the most important thing is that the person comes to the GP practice and tells us what is happening.

They do not need to know which service they need. They do not need to understand referral criteria, use the correct clinical language or arrive with every date, dose and detail perfectly organized. They only need to start the conversation.

They might say they are worried about how long they have been taking a medication. They might feel it is no longer helping in the same way, be frightened about stopping or simply know that something does not feel right anymore. Any of those concerns are enough to begin.

Once we know, we can start working out what they need and who is best placed to help. That may begin with an appointment for a medication review, but it should not end with somebody being told to reduce their medication and sent home to manage the consequences alone.

Once somebody has raised the concern, the practice can help them understand the next step rather than expecting them to navigate the system alone.

The person brings us the problem. We help them find the pathway.

The first door should be enough.

We Must Look Beyond the Medication

When somebody asks for help with a medication they have become dependent on, it can be tempting to make the medication the whole problem.

How long have they taken it? What dose are they on? How quickly can it be reduced?

Those questions matter, but they are not the whole story.

We also need to ask why the medication was started, what it has been helping the person manage and what support they will need if its role in their life begins to change.

Sometimes medication is there to reduce anxiety, help someone sleep or make it possible to get through the day.

Sometimes it is also helping them forget.

It may be numbing painful memories, quieting intrusive thoughts or creating distance from experiences they have not yet been able to face safely. That does not mean the medication has solved what happened. It may simply have made it possible for the person to survive alongside it.

In Marlana’s case, Xanax did not appear from nowhere. It was helping her live with anxiety. When the focus shifted entirely to getting her off the medication, the anxiety did not politely pack its bags and leave with the prescription.

It was still there.

And for some people, reducing the medication may allow other things it has been holding back to return too.

That is why reducing or stopping medication cannot simply be treated as removing the problem. If it has helped somebody sleep, leave the house, manage panic, avoid distressing memories or get through the day, we need to understand what may happen when that support is reduced.

The person may need help managing the original condition. They may also need support with withdrawal symptoms, resurfacing thoughts or memories, fear about the process and the practical effect it has on everyday life.

Otherwise, we risk taking away somebody’s life raft without first helping them learn how to swim.

The goal should never be to get a medication off the repeat-prescription list at any cost. It should be to help the person move forward as safely and successfully as possible.

That means treating the person who takes the medication, not simply the medication they take.

What Should Happen Next

Once somebody has asked for help, the next step should be a proper clinical conversation.

Not a rushed instruction to take less. Not an abrupt stop. And definitely not a cheery “come back if things get worse” while everybody quietly hopes they do not.

The clinician needs to understand what medication the person is taking, how long they have taken it, the current dose and whether they have previously tried to reduce or stop it. They also need to ask what happened during those attempts, because that experience may tell us a great deal about the support the person will need this time.

Any reduction plan should be safe, gradual and shaped around the individual. People respond differently, and a plan that works for one person may be completely unsuitable for another. The person taking the medication should be involved in those decisions rather than feeling as though the prescription is being removed from them.

But the plan cannot end with the dosage.

We also need to consider what the medication has been helping them manage. That might mean support for anxiety, panic, trauma, sleep difficulties, painful memories or whatever else has been sitting underneath its use.

This could involve psychological support, specialist services, practical coping strategies or help with other parts of life that are making recovery harder. It may also mean involving other healthcare professionals so that the person is supported from more than one direction.

There should be follow-up too.

Somebody needs to check how the person is coping, whether the plan still feels manageable and whether anything has changed. If the reduction is causing difficulties, that should lead to another conversation, not be treated as failure or a lack of willpower.

Most importantly, the person should know who to contact if they begin to struggle and what will happen next.

A safe plan is not simply a timetable for taking fewer tablets.

It is a plan for supporting the person through everything those tablets may have been helping them carry.

The Role of Inclusion

In the area where I work, one of the services we can connect people with is Inclusion Recovery Hampshire.

Some people hear the words “recovery service” and assume it is only for people struggling with alcohol or illegal drugs. That assumption can stop somebody from asking for help, especially when the medication they are worried about was originally prescribed by a doctor.

But dependence can develop even when somebody has taken their medication exactly as instructed. Needing support does not mean they have done anything wrong.

Inclusion also supports people experiencing difficulties with prescribed and over-the-counter medication. After a referral, the service can assess the person’s needs and discuss what specialist support, guidance or treatment may be appropriate as part of their recovery.

A referral to Inclusion does not mean the GP practice has finished its part and can wave goodbye from the doorway.

The person may still need a medication review, support with their physical and mental health, and help with whatever the medication has been allowing them to manage. Inclusion brings specialist knowledge, but that support should sit alongside the person’s wider healthcare rather than replacing it.

This is where joined-up care matters.

The GP practice can look at the whole picture, Inclusion can provide specialist recovery support, and both can help the person move forward safely. The individual should not be left carrying messages between services or trying to stitch their own care together while already struggling.

People can refer themselves to Inclusion, and professionals can also make referrals on somebody’s behalf with their consent. If the person comes to the GP practice first, we can help them understand that option and begin the referral process with them.

No Wrong Door

One principle guides much of how I approach care navigation: no wrong door.

If somebody has found the courage to tell a healthcare professional that they are struggling, that contact should become the beginning of help. It should not matter whether they spoke to precisely the right person, used the correct words or understood which service was responsible.

They have reached a door.

We should help them from there.

That does not mean every service can provide every kind of care. Sometimes another professional or specialist team will be better placed to support the person. But there is an important difference between explaining that and simply sending somebody away.

“No wrong door” means listening to what is happening, helping the person understand their options and making sure they know what comes next. If a referral is needed, we should help them reach that service. If the first pathway is not suitable, we should not leave them standing outside it wondering where to go instead.

This matters particularly when somebody is already living with anxiety, dependence, withdrawal symptoms or painful memories. Their ability to make telephone calls, complete forms, remember instructions and repeatedly explain their story may already be stretched thin.

The system may see separate services, referral criteria and areas of responsibility.

The person sees one problem they need help with.

Our job is to make sure that asking was worth it.

Stopping People Falling Through the Cracks

Making a referral is not the same as making sure somebody receives help.

A form can be completed, sent to the correct service and recorded neatly on a patient’s notes. From the system’s point of view, the task may look finished.

For the person waiting, nothing has happened yet.

They may not know whether the referral was received, how long they will wait or what they should do if their symptoms become worse. They may miss a telephone call, struggle to complete another form or feel too anxious to explain everything again. Sometimes a service may decide it is not the right one for them.

This is where people can begin to disappear between the gaps.

Good care navigation means looking beyond the referral itself. Has the person understood what will happen next? Can they realistically access the service? Do they need support while they wait? If the referral is declined, who will help them find another route?

If someone misses a call or appointment, it does not necessarily mean they no longer want support. Anxiety, withdrawal, trauma, memory difficulties and the general chaos of being human can all make engaging with services harder. We should be curious about what happened before quietly closing the door.

There should always be a safety net. The person needs to know who they can contact, what symptoms require urgent medical advice and where they can turn if the original plan stops working.

Nobody should be left carrying responsibility for coordinating several services while also trying to cope with dependence, anxiety and everything the medication may have helped them survive.

A pathway only works if the person can actually move through it.

Stopping people from falling through the cracks means noticing the handovers, following up when something goes quiet and making sure that if one door closes, somebody helps them find the next one.

A Plan for the Person

Marlana writes:

“If a medication has an entrance plan, it should have an exit plan. And somewhere between those two plans, there should be a plan for the person taking it.”

That, for me, is the heart of all of this.

A safe reduction plan matters. Medication reviews matter. Referrals, specialist services and clinical guidance all matter.

But none of them work unless we remember the person living through the process.

They may be frightened about what will happen without the medication. They may be worried that their anxiety will return, that painful memories will resurface or that they will lose the thing that has helped them function for years. They may feel ashamed of needing help, even though physical dependence can develop while medication is being taken exactly as prescribed.

They should not have to arrive knowing which service they need or how the system works. They should not have to keep knocking on doors until somebody finally agrees that their problem belongs there.

They only need to tell us what is happening.

From that first conversation, we should be able to begin building the support around them: reviewing the medication safely, understanding what sits beneath its use, involving specialist services where needed and making sure somebody remains alongside them during the handovers.

We cannot promise that every pathway will be quick or uncomplicated. Healthcare systems are made of imperfect services, limited resources and occasionally paperwork that appears to have developed free will.

But we can make sure the person is not forgotten inside it.

The goal should never be simply to stop a prescription.

It should be to help someone move towards a life in which they feel safe enough, supported enough and equipped enough to live without relying on it in the same way.

An entrance plan.

An exit plan.

And, all the way through, a plan for the person.

This article reflects NHS England guidance and the pathways available in the area where I work. Services and referral processes may differ elsewhere, and I cannot comment on pathways in other countries. Wherever you live, I would absolutely recommend speaking with your doctor or another healthcare professional about what you are experiencing and asking which support pathways are available to you. Please do not feel ashamed of asking for help. You do not need to know the correct service or arrive with the perfect words. Helping you understand what comes next is exactly what healthcare professionals are there for.

Inside, I share a real, anonymized example of how care navigation helped someone who could not initially access any available pathway reach the support they needed.

These support the important clinical and pathway claims:

• NICE NG215: Medicines associated with dependence or withdrawal symptoms

• NICE NG215 recommendations

• NHS England: Optimising personalised care for adults prescribed medicines associated with dependence or withdrawal symptoms

• Hampshire County Council: Support for alcohol or drug problems

• Inclusion Recovery Hampshire

• Inclusion Recovery Hampshire: Online Referral

• Inclusion Recovery Hampshire: Information for professionals

Some questions sound simple until you sit with them.

Can someone be capable of immense kindness, generosity, loyalty and cheerfulness while also showing narcissistic traits?

This question came from after I invited readers to share the psychology questions they genuinely wanted answered in I’ve Been Meaning to Ask You This…

At first, those qualities seem as though they should cancel each other out. If someone can be warm, generous and loyal, how can they also be controlling, dismissive or harmful?

That contradiction is exactly what makes these relationships so hard to understand.

We tend to picture narcissism as obvious arrogance and constant cruelty. Real people are rarely that tidy.

Someone can have genuinely admirable qualities and still behave in entitled, controlling or emotionally harmful ways.

Kindness does not automatically prove that a relationship is safe.

The more useful question is whether the relationship, taken as a whole, felt safe, respectful and free from fear or control.

Can a Kind Person Still Be Narcissistic?

Yes.

Someone can be funny, generous, loyal and genuinely lovely while also showing narcissistic traits. In some cases, they may even meet the criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder, or NPD.

That does not mean every kind moment was fake, and it does not make the harmful behavior matter less.

NPD is not about being unpleasant all the time. It involves a long-term pattern of grandiosity, a strong need for admiration and difficulties with empathy and close relationships.¹ Grandiosity can be obvious, but it can also look like believing your needs or feelings should matter more than everyone else’s.

People with narcissistic traits may be charming, helpful and widely liked. They may also behave very differently in their closest relationships.

That is where the confusion begins.

How can someone seem wonderful to everyone else, yet leave one person feeling small, dismissed or constantly in the wrong?

Because people are complicated. Someone can care and still cause harm. They can enjoy helping and also enjoy the praise or importance that comes with it.

Sometimes the kindness is genuine. Sometimes it supports their self-image. Sometimes it is both.

One lovely gesture cannot tell you whether a relationship is healthy. A gift does not cancel humiliation. Loyalty in one moment does not erase control in another.

The presence of kindness does not prove the absence of harm.

Narcissistic Traits Are Not the Same as NPD

Before we go any further, we need to separate two things that often get thrown into the same psychological bucket.

Narcissistic traits are not the same as Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

Most people can be selfish, defensive, attention-seeking or spectacularly bad at admitting they are wrong from time to time. Some of us manage several before breakfast. That does not automatically mean someone has a personality disorder.

Narcissistic traits exist on a spectrum. A person may seek admiration, react badly to criticism, feel entitled or struggle to consider other people’s needs without meeting the clinical criteria for NPD.

NPD is more persistent. These patterns tend to appear across different areas of life and cause ongoing difficulties in relationships or day-to-day functioning.² Only a qualified professional can diagnose it after a proper assessment.

That matters because “narcissist” has become a catch-all label for anyone who behaves badly.

Someone lies? Narcissist.
Someone is selfish? Narcissist.
Someone ignores your message but still finds time to post on Facebook? Apparently also a narcissist.

But harmful behavior does not automatically equal NPD. Someone can be controlling, dismissive or emotionally harmful without having the disorder.

So this article is not diagnosing the person Kelly asked about, or anyone else. It is exploring whether warmth and generosity can exist alongside narcissistic patterns.

The evidence suggests they can.

Narcissism Does Not Always Look Arrogant

When most people hear the word narcissism, they picture someone loud, boastful and convinced they are the most impressive person in the room.

Sometimes it does look like that.

But not always.

Psychologists often distinguish between grandiose and vulnerable narcissism.³ Grandiose narcissism is usually easier to spot. It may involve obvious entitlement, attention-seeking, dominance and the belief that someone deserves special treatment.

Vulnerable narcissism can look very different. A person may seem insecure, easily hurt or unusually sensitive to criticism. Instead of loudly demanding admiration, they may seek constant reassurance, sympathy or confirmation that they matter.⁴

This can feel confusing because we tend to associate narcissism with having too much confidence.

In reality, narcissistic self-esteem can be more like a wobbly garden table. It looks sturdy until somebody leans on the wrong corner.

Someone may appear confident one moment, then become defensive, ashamed or angry when they feel criticized, rejected or ignored. They may swing between feeling superior and feeling deeply wounded, sometimes before the kettle has even boiled.

That does not mean every insecure or sensitive person is narcissistic. The wider pattern matters.

Do their feelings repeatedly come first? Do they struggle to recognize the effect of their behavior? Do they respond to criticism with blame, contempt, withdrawal or attempts to regain control?

Sometimes narcissism looks less like:

“I am better than everyone.”

And more like:

“My hurt matters so much that there is no room left for yours.”

Was the Kindness Real?

This is often the question people get stuck on.

When someone has been affectionate, generous or supportive, it can be hard to hold that alongside the times they were dismissive, controlling or cruel.

So you start trying to solve it.

Was the kindness genuine? Was it all an act? Was I being manipulated the whole time?

Psychology does not give us a neat yes-or-no answer.

Someone with narcissistic traits may still be capable of warmth, affection and generosity. They may care about people, enjoy helping and take pride in being dependable.

That does not automatically mean the kindness was fake.

But kindness can serve more than one purpose. Someone may genuinely want to help while also enjoying the praise, gratitude or importance that comes with being seen as the helpful one.

Research on empathy helps explain this. Some people may be good at recognizing what another person feels without fully sharing that feeling or responding with consistent care.⁵

In simple terms, they may understand that you are upset, know why you are upset and even know exactly what to say, but still struggle to put your feelings ahead of their own when conflict appears.

That inconsistency often shows up when they feel criticized, challenged or denied something they believe they deserve. They may be warm while they feel appreciated, then become defensive when questioned or dismissive when someone sets a boundary.

None of this proves that every loving moment was false.

It means the kindness may not have been reliable enough to make the relationship safe.

A person can mean the lovely thing they said on Monday and still cause real harm on Tuesday.

Both things can be true.

Why These Relationships Feel So Confusing

If someone were unkind all the time, the situation would probably be easier to understand.

Painful, yes. But clearer.

The confusion comes from the fact that the relationship is not bad every minute of every day. There may be laughter, affection, apologies and periods where everything feels calm again. After criticism, distance or conflict, the person may suddenly become warm and attentive.

That relief can be powerful.

Psychology sometimes describes this as intermittent reinforcement.⁶ In plain English, the good moments appear unpredictably among the painful ones, so you never quite know which version of the relationship you are going to get.

One day you feel loved and secure. The next, you are wondering how an ordinary conversation became a three-hour emotional court case.

Because the good moments still exist, people may hold on to them as proof that things can return to how they were. They may believe the loving version is the “real” person and that the hurtful behavior is only stress, insecurity or a difficult period.

That hope is not foolish. It is a very human response to an unpredictable relationship.

Research suggests that distress followed by warmth or relief can sometimes strengthen attachment rather than weaken it.⁷ The relief feels enormous precisely because it follows fear, rejection or conflict.

It is like finally putting down a heavy shopping bag after carrying it for miles.

The relief is real.

But the bag was still heavy.

There may also be practical reasons someone stays, including children, money, housing, isolation, fear or a lack of support. Leaving is not always simple, and in some situations separation can increase the risk of harm.⁸

So when someone asks, “Why did I stay when I knew something was wrong?”, the answer is rarely that they were weak.

Often, they were trying to make sense of a relationship that kept changing shape.

What Does Being Highly Sensitive Have to Do With It?

Kelly also described herself as a highly sensitive person.

“Highly Sensitive Person,” or HSP, is not a formal mental health diagnosis. The research term is Sensory Processing Sensitivity, which describes a temperament trait linked with noticing and responding more strongly to emotional, social and sensory experiences.⁹

In plain English, some people seem to register more. They may notice tiny changes in tone, tension in a room or shifts in someone’s mood that other people barely pick up.

That does not mean they are weak, dramatic or imagining things.

However, an unpredictable relationship may affect them more deeply. Criticism, sudden withdrawal or changes in affection can feel especially intense, and they may spend longer replaying conversations or wondering what they did wrong.¹⁰

Sensitivity can make a confusing relationship more exhausting, but it does not create the problem.

Sometimes sensitivity increases the volume. It does not invent the song.

The Question That Matters More Than the Label

It is completely understandable to want a clear answer.

Was this person a narcissist? Did they know what they were doing? Was the kindness real?

But sometimes the label becomes another puzzle to solve, while the relationship itself gets pushed to one side.

Only a qualified professional can diagnose NPD. From the outside, we can usually only look at the pattern and the effect it had.

So the more useful questions are often simpler:

Could you disagree without being punished? Were your feelings taken seriously? Could you set a boundary without fear, guilt or retaliation? Did the relationship make you feel secure, or slowly make you doubt yourself?

Those questions do not require a diagnosis. They focus on what actually happened.

Someone can be charming, generous and admired by other people while still causing fear, confusion or harm in a close relationship.

You do not need to prove that someone was a narcissist before you are allowed to take the harm seriously.

What to Do If This Feels Familiar

If parts of this article feel uncomfortably familiar, you do not need to rush into finding the perfect label.

Start with the pattern. Write down what keeps happening, how often it happens and how it leaves you feeling. Confusing relationships can make each incident seem small on its own, but seeing them together often makes the wider picture clearer.

Talk to someone you trust, whether that is a friend, family member, therapist, GP or specialist support service. Ideally, choose someone who will listen before reaching for the unhelpful “Well, you should just…” speech.

Pay attention to fear. If you feel frightened of disagreeing, setting boundaries, asking questions, expressing your feelings or leaving, that matters.

Emotional safety is not a luxury item.

You do not need a diagnosis for the other person before you are allowed to recognize that a relationship is harming you.

If there is control, intimidation, isolation, financial restriction or fear of escalation, seek specialist domestic abuse support. In an emergency, call 999.

The aim is not to become an expert in someone else’s personality. It is to become clearer about what you are experiencing and what you need next.

A Note for Friends and Family

Watching someone stay in a relationship that seems harmful can be frightening and frustrating. It can also make people want to step in and take over.

But asking, “Why don’t you just leave?” often adds shame to an already difficult situation.

A better approach is to listen, believe them and avoid pushing them into decisions they may not yet feel ready or able to make. You can gently say that you are concerned, name the patterns you have noticed and remind them that support is still there.

Most importantly, keep the door open.

Leaving is not always one dramatic decision made on one dramatic afternoon. Sometimes it is a slower process of rebuilding confidence, safety and practical options.

Support helps most when it does not become another form of pressure.

Final Thought

A person can be kind, funny, generous and deeply loved while still causing real harm.

Those truths can exist at the same time.

You do not have to turn every good memory into a lie before you are allowed to recognize that the relationship hurt you. You also do not need a diagnosis before that harm counts.

The clearest answer may not come from deciding whether someone was entirely good or entirely bad.

It may come from asking whether the relationship allowed you to feel safe, respected and fully yourself.

If it did not, that matters.

If you are a paid member, I have included a more personal section here about why this question felt more familiar than I expected.

I am not going to diagnose anyone from my past or drag old arguments into a public courtroom. But I do know what it feels like to be drawn in by warmth, reassured when something felt wrong, and then left questioning what had been real.

Looking back, I am still not sure what was love, what was attachment, what was habit and what I was trying very hard to believe.

What I do know is that the betrayal, dismissal and avoidance were real.

In the paid section, I share what that contradiction looked like in my own experience, what I kept explaining away and why I now wish I had trusted the pattern sooner.

Sources and Further Reading

1. American Psychiatric Association. What Is Narcissistic Personality Disorder?

2. MSD Manual Professional Edition. Narcissistic Personality Disorder

3. NHS. Personality Disorders

4. Baskin-Sommers, A., Krusemark, E. and Ronningstam, E. Empathy in Narcissistic Personality Disorder: From Clinical and Empirical Perspectives

5. Nehrlich, A. D. and colleagues. Agentic Narcissism, Communal Narcissism and Prosociality

6. Dutton, D. G. and Painter, S. L. Emotional Attachments in Abusive Relationships: A Test of Traumatic Bonding Theory

7. Greven, C. U. and colleagues. Sensory Processing Sensitivity in the Context of Environmental Sensitivity: A Critical Review and Development of a Research Agenda

8. UK Home Office. Controlling or Coercive Behaviour: Statutory Guidance Framework

9. Women’s Aid. I’m Worried About Someone Else

10. Refuge. Supporting Someone Who Is Being Abused

For immediate help in the UK, call 999 in an emergency.

The National Domestic Abuse Helpline, run by Refuge, is available free, 24 hours a day, on 0808 2000 247.

Support services will differ in other countries, so please feel free to share trusted local helplines in the comments.

Sorry to drag you away from your scrolling for a second, but there have been a few things on my mind that I've been wanting to chat to you about. Normally, this would be another psychology article, but today I wanted to take a step back because, , I realized I spend a lot of time writing to you... and not nearly enough time listening.

I’ve opened this draft more times than I’d like to admit.

Made a cup of tea. Closed it. Opened it again. Deleted half of it. Wondered whether asking this would make it look like I’d run out of ideas.

Then I realized something.

Maybe I’ve been doing this backwards all along.

Normally, I sit down with a notebook full of ideas and ask myself, “Right... what are we talking about this week?” I’ve got pages of them.

Half-written articles. Notes scribbled on my phone.

Some of those notes are brilliant.

Others just say things like “write about spoons?” and I have absolutely no memory of what I was thinking.

Random thoughts that appeared at 11:47 on a Tuesday night because apparently that’s when my brain decides to become productive. It could never do that at three in the afternoon, could it? 😂

Some ideas stay on the list for months. Others refuse to leave me alone until I’ve written them. It’s a slightly chaotic system, but somehow it seems to work.

Well...

Most of the time.

The thing is, the more Storm Psychology has grown, the more I’ve realized something. I’m doing an awful lot of talking. I’m choosing the subjects, asking the questions and deciding what comes next. And somewhere along the way, I caught myself thinking...

When did I stop asking you?

Because every article I’ve ever written has started with a question. Sometimes it was something somebody said to me. Sometimes it was something I’d noticed at work. Sometimes it was something I’d found myself Googling at stupid o’clock because apparently my brain likes holding committee meetings when the rest of me is trying to sleep. And sometimes it was simply someone saying,

“This might sound silly, but...”

Here’s the funny thing.

It never is.

In fact, I’d go as far as saying the questions people apologize for asking are usually the ones that need answering the most.

Every single day, somebody sits there wondering something they’ve never quite had the courage to ask another person. Maybe they’re embarrassed. Maybe they’re worried it’ll sound dramatic. Maybe they’ve convinced themselves everyone else got given the instruction manual for life and they somehow missed that meeting.

Spoiler...

I don’t think anyone got one.

Before I ask you something...

Before I ask you the question I’ve been building up to, I want you to do something first. Just read through these. Don’t try to answer them, don’t analyse them and definitely don’t start telling yourself you’re reading too much into them. Just notice whether one of them makes you stop for a second. Whether one of them feels a little bit too familiar. Maybe it won’t. Maybe you’ll read straight past them all. Or maybe you’ll get halfway down the list and quietly think, “Well... that one’s a bit close to home.”

“Why am I so emotional?”

“Why do I always assume I’ve upset people?”

“Why can’t I switch my brain off?”

Those are the kinds of questions people rarely ask another person. They sit in the background for months, sometimes years, becoming so familiar that we almost stop noticing they’re there. Instead, they get typed into Google late at night, whispered to ourselves on the drive home or pushed to the back of our minds because surely everyone else has already figured this stuff out... haven’t they?

“Why do I replay conversations for days afterwards?”

“Why does everyone else seem to cope so much better than I do?”

“Why do I feel guilty for resting?”

One of my favorite things about writing Storm Psychology is what happens after I press publish. Someone leaves a comment saying, “I thought it was just me,” and then another person replies saying exactly the same thing. Before long there’s a whole conversation between complete strangers, all discovering they’ve been carrying around the same question without ever knowing it. I never get tired of seeing that happen because, for a little while at least, people stop feeling like the odd one out.

“Why do I overthink text messages?”

“Why do I say yes when I wanted to say no?”

“Why am I exhausted after spending time with people?”

Maybe one of those made you smile because you’ve done it yourself. Maybe one of them made you wince a little. Or maybe your question isn’t anywhere on this page.

That's okay, . It doesn't have to be.

To be honest, I’d almost expect that. Every single person reading this has lived a different life, had different experiences and carries different things around with them. There was never going to be a list long enough to include every question someone has quietly wondered at two o’clock in the morning.

“Why do small changes feel so overwhelming?”

“Why do I freeze when I know exactly what I need to do?”

“Why can’t I just get started?”

“Why won’t my brain shut up?”

“Why can I understand everybody else’s feelings... but not my own?”

What I’ve learnt over the last year is that even when somebody’s exact question isn’t on the page, the feeling behind it usually is. That’s why I don’t think questions connect us because they’re identical. They connect us because they remind us that being human is messy. We all doubt ourselves. We all overthink things we’d never admit out loud. We all carry thoughts that make us wonder whether anyone else could possibly understand them.

By now, you’ve probably realized that Storm Psychology has never really been about one thing. Yes, we spend a lot of time talking about the storms that happen inside us. The emotions that feel overwhelming, the thoughts that won’t switch off, the diagnoses that help us understand ourselves a little better. But that’s only ever been part of the story. Psychology is everywhere, and so are the questions that come with it.

“My partner was diagnosed with PTSD yesterday. How do I support them?”

“My friend has EUPD and I don’t know what they need from me.”

“I think my five-year-old might have ADHD. What should I be looking for?”

“Someone I love has just been diagnosed with autism... where do we go from here?”

Some of the most important questions don’t come from the person with the diagnosis at all. They come from the people standing beside them. Partners, parents, children, friends, carers, colleagues... people who desperately want to help but are frightened of getting it wrong. If understanding something can make life a little easier for you or somebody you love, then it’s a question worth asking.

Then there are the questions that don’t fit neatly into any diagnosis. The ones that simply make us curious about why people do what they do. Those are some of my favorites because the more you learn about human behavior, the more fascinating people become.

“Why do people ignore warning sirens?”

“Why do eyewitnesses remember the same event differently?”

“Why do people freeze in an emergency?”

“Why do we sometimes agree with people even when we know they’re wrong?”

“Why do we remember some things forever and forget others completely?”

Whether it’s something you’ve been living with for years, something that’s just become part of your life, or simply a question that’s been quietly sitting in the back of your mind, , I’d genuinely love to hear it.

It doesn’t have to fit into a particular box or even sound particularly clever. If it’s about how people think, feel or behave, then it belongs here. And if I don’t already know the answer, I’ll happily disappear down a research rabbit hole until I can come back with something that’s evidence-based, understandable and, most importantly, useful.

And that’s exactly why I’m asking.

Not because I’ve run out of ideas. Trust me, my notebook would disagree with that. 😂 I’d rather ask the people reading these articles what they’re carrying than spend my time guessing. Because if I know what you’re wondering about, I can go away, do the research, make sense of it all and come back with something that doesn’t just answer a question... it helps somebody else realize they weren’t the only one asking it in the first place.

So that brings me to today.

I’ve got plenty of ideas. Honestly, probably too many. My notebook is full of them. My phone is full of them. There are half-finished drafts tucked away that I’d completely forgotten I’d started. Every now and then I find one and think, “That sounds interesting...” before realizing I was talking to myself six months ago. Apparently Past Kel was full of surprises.

But here’s the problem.

Those ideas all come from my experiences. My work. The conversations I’ve had. The research I’ve read. The things I’ve noticed over the years. And while that’s a good place to start, it isn’t the whole picture. It can’t be, because I haven’t lived your life.

I don’t know what question has been quietly following you around for weeks. I don’t know what you’ve searched for three different ways because you couldn’t quite find the words. I don’t know what you’ve nearly asked somebody before, only to stop halfway through because it felt too embarrassing, too personal or too silly.

I didn't write those questions because they sounded good. I wrote them because I've asked some of them myself.

Every single person reading this has had a completely different journey. Different experiences. Different struggles. Different brains. Different stories. We might all arrive here for different reasons, but I don’t think any of us arrive by accident.

The more Storm Psychology has grown, the more I’ve realized I don’t want this to become somewhere I simply decide what people need to hear. I’d much rather it became somewhere we build together. Somewhere the questions come first, and the psychology comes afterwards.

Because if I know what you’re wondering about, I can do what I love doing most. I can disappear down a research rabbit hole, read the evidence, challenge the myths, translate all the complicated jargon into plain English and come back with something that’s genuinely useful.

Not just another article for the sake of writing one.

An article that starts with a real question.

From a real person.

Maybe...

You, .

You’re not weak. You’re not broken. You’re not choosing this.

Before we dive into the psychology...

I need you to know these three things.

Now...

Let’s talk about why your emotions can feel so much bigger than everyone else’s.

Why Do My Emotions Feel So Intense?

Can I let you in on a little secret?

Emotional dysregulation is one of those psychology terms that sounds far cleverer than it actually is.

Honestly, if someone had said it to me a few years ago, I’d probably have smiled politely, nodded as though I understood... then immediately Googled it under the table because I wouldn’t have had the faintest clue what they were talking about.

Most people don’t know the name for it.

What they do know is what it feels like.

Maybe you’ve cried because somebody cancelled plans.

Maybe you’ve spent three days replaying a conversation that the other person has probably forgotten ever happened.

Maybe somebody has told you to “calm down.”

(Helpful. Cheers. I’ll just switch my emotions off then, shall I?)

Or maybe you’ve looked around and wondered why everyone else seems able to brush things off while your brain has decided this one tiny moment deserves its own Netflix documentary.

“One small moment for everyone else can feel like the biggest moment in the world to you.”

If any of that sounds familiar, pull up a chair.

You’re definitely not the only one.

And despite what you’ve probably been told over the years...

You’re probably not “too sensitive.”

You may simply have a nervous system that’s working a little differently.

Once you understand what’s actually happening, so many of those moments that have confused, frustrated or embarrassed you suddenly start making a lot more sense.

So... what actually is emotional dysregulation?

Despite the complicated name, emotional dysregulation is actually a surprisingly simple idea.

It doesn’t mean you have “too many” emotions.

It doesn’t mean you’re dramatic.

And it certainly doesn’t mean you’re broken.

It simply means your brain sometimes struggles to regulate the intensity of an emotional response.

Imagine emotions like the volume control on a radio.

For some people, disappointment turns the dial up to a four before gradually settling back down again.

For someone experiencing emotional dysregulation, that very same disappointment might shoot straight to a nine.

The situation hasn’t necessarily changed.

The emotion has.

“The problem usually isn’t that you feel emotions. It’s that your brain struggles to turn the volume back down.”

What Does Emotional Dysregulation Actually Feel Like?

One of the hardest things about emotional dysregulation is that it often leaves you questioning yourself.

You know the situation probably doesn’t deserve the reaction you’re having, yet your body didn’t get the memo.

The emotion is already there.

By the time your logical brain catches up, it’s usually trying to put the lid back on a saucepan that’s already boiling over.

That can be incredibly frustrating because people often assume emotional dysregulation means you’re constantly emotional.

It doesn’t.

Sometimes you can go days feeling perfectly fine.

Then something seemingly small happens, and it’s as though somebody has pressed the fast-forward button on your nervous system.

You might recognize some of these experiences:

• A cancelled plan doesn’t just disappoint you. It feels deeply personal.

• A small criticism stays with you for days, even though the other person has completely forgotten they said it.

• You replay conversations over and over, wondering if you upset someone.

• You cry more easily than the people around you, even when you’re trying not to.

• You become overwhelmed so quickly that you need to leave the room or be on your own.

• Anger arrives in seconds, then disappears just as quickly, often leaving guilt behind.

• You feel embarrassed by how intensely you’ve reacted, even though you couldn’t stop it.

• You apologize... a lot.

• You tell yourself you’re “being ridiculous” while still feeling completely unable to change how you feel.

“The hardest part isn’t feeling emotions. It’s feeling judged for having them.”

For many people, that’s the part nobody sees.

They only notice the tears.

The frustration.

The withdrawal.

The shutdown.

What they don’t see is the exhausting amount of energy it takes to keep trying to regulate emotions that already feel like they’re turned up far louder than everyone else’s.

Why Does It Happen?

This is the question everyone asks.

Unfortunately, there isn’t one simple answer.

Emotional dysregulation isn’t a diagnosis in itself. It’s something that can happen alongside lots of different conditions and life experiences.

For some people, it’s linked to the way their brain has always processed emotions.

For others, it develops after long periods of stress, trauma or living in survival mode.

ADHD

People often think ADHD is simply about attention.

It isn’t.

One of the most overlooked parts of ADHD is how strongly emotions can be experienced.

A minor frustration can suddenly feel enormous.

Rejection can feel devastating.

Waiting, interruptions or unexpected changes can trigger emotions that seem completely out of proportion to everyone else, even though they feel painfully real to the person experiencing them.

Autism

Many autistic people experience emotions very deeply.

Changes in routine, sensory overload, misunderstandings or feeling overwhelmed can all make emotional regulation much more difficult.

When your brain is already working incredibly hard to process the world around you, there simply isn’t always much left in the tank for managing intense emotions as well.

Trauma

Trauma changes the way the brain responds to perceived threats.

When you’ve spent long periods feeling unsafe, your nervous system learns to react quickly in order to protect you.

The difficulty is that it sometimes continues reacting as though you’re in danger, even when you aren’t anymore.

Anxiety and chronic stress

When your brain spends most of its time on high alert, it doesn’t take much to tip it over the edge.

It’s a bit like carrying a glass that’s already full.

The smallest extra drop can cause it to overflow.

Depression and burnout

Many people associate depression with sadness.

In reality, it can also make emotions much harder to regulate.

Burnout has a similar effect.

When you’re mentally and physically exhausted, your emotional “buffer” becomes much smaller.

Things you would normally cope with suddenly feel impossible.

Borderline Personality Disorder

Emotional dysregulation is also one of the core features of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).

People living with BPD often experience emotions that are exceptionally intense and can change rapidly. These experiences are very real and can be deeply distressing, which is why compassionate assessment and support are so important.

Before we go any further, I want you to remember this: emotional dysregulation doesn't tell us what someone has. It tells us how their emotional system is responding.

... Can we stop blaming you for just a moment?

How long have you been apologizing for feelings you never chose to have?

Breaking the Cycle

By now, you might be wondering, “If my brain is reacting like this... how do I stop it?”

The first thing to know is that trying harder usually isn’t the answer. If you’ve spent years telling yourself to calm down, stop crying, stop overthinking or “just get on with it”, you’ve probably already discovered that it doesn’t work very well. That’s because emotional dysregulation isn’t a lack of willpower. It’s your nervous system doing exactly what it believes it needs to do.

The difficulty is that many people become trapped in a cycle without ever realizing it. Something happens. A comment. A disagreement. A last-minute change of plans. Your emotions surge before you’ve even had time to think. Then, almost as quickly, comes the guilt.

“Why did I react like that?”

“I’m so embarrassing.”

“I should know better by now.”

Those thoughts don’t calm your nervous system down. They pile more pressure onto it. You start pushing your feelings away, trying to hide them or promising yourself that next time you’ll cope better. But underneath it all, your brain is still trying to process what happened.

“You don’t break the cycle by fighting your emotions.

You break it by understanding them.”

By the time the next stressful situation comes along, you’re already emotionally exhausted. It doesn’t take much to tip the balance because you’ve been carrying yesterday’s emotions into today.

That’s how the cycle keeps itself going.

The good news is that cycles can be broken. Not by pretending your emotions don’t exist, and not by expecting yourself to be calm all the time, but by understanding what’s happening instead of fighting yourself every step of the way.

So... What Actually Helps?

I wish I could tell you there was one simple trick that made emotional dysregulation disappear forever. If there were, I’d happily tell you about it.

The reality is that emotional regulation isn’t about becoming emotionless. It’s about giving your brain and body the best possible chance to recover when life becomes overwhelming.

One of the most helpful things you can do is begin noticing your triggers. Are there certain situations that leave you feeling particularly overwhelmed? Is it criticism? Conflict? Last-minute changes? Feeling rejected? Becoming overstimulated? Recognizing those patterns isn’t about avoiding life. It’s about understanding how your own mind works.

It also helps to replace judgement with curiosity. Instead of asking yourself, “What’s wrong with me?”, try asking, “What happened just before I started feeling like this?” That small change might not seem like much, but it shifts your focus away from blame and towards understanding. Over time, that can completely change the relationship you have with your emotions.

Looking after your body matters more than most people realize too. Poor sleep, stress, hunger, illness and sensory overload all make emotional regulation more difficult. If your nervous system is already running on empty, it has far less capacity to deal with life’s inevitable ups and downs. Sometimes the kindest thing you can do isn’t finding another coping strategy. It’s recognizing that you’re exhausted.

“Healing doesn’t begin when the emotions disappear.

It begins when the shame does.”

For some people, talking therapies provide a safe space to understand where these emotional patterns came from and learn new ways of responding to them. For others, medication may be appropriate, particularly when emotional dysregulation is linked to conditions such as ADHD, anxiety or depression. There isn’t one answer that fits everyone, and that’s okay.

The aim isn’t to stop having emotions.

The aim is to stop feeling as though you’re constantly fighting against them.

One Last Thing Before You Go...

If you’ve recognized yourself anywhere in this article, I hope you’ll leave with one thing.

For years, you may have believed you were too emotional. Too sensitive. Too dramatic. Too much. Those are labels that many people carry around for far longer than they should, often because they never understood why their emotions felt so different in the first place.

The truth is that emotions aren’t character flaws. They’re messages. Sometimes those messages arrive quietly. Sometimes they arrive like a storm. Neither makes you a bad person.

Understanding emotional dysregulation won’t stop every difficult day. There will still be moments when you feel overwhelmed, frustrated or tearful. There will still be days when your emotions seem to arrive before your thoughts do. But understanding what’s happening changes something important. It replaces confusion with knowledge and shame with compassion.

“You were never ‘too much’.

You were carrying more than people could see.”

So the next time you catch yourself thinking, “Why am I like this?”, I hope you’ll remember that there is often a reason. Your brain and nervous system are responding in the only way they know how, and that doesn’t make you weak or broken.

It simply means you deserve the same patience and kindness that you so freely give to other people.

...

If you’ve made it this far, thank you.

I know there are thousands of articles you could have spent your time reading today, so the fact you chose to spend a little of that time here genuinely means a lot to me.

I started Storm Psychology because I wanted to make psychology feel a little less intimidating and a lot more human. Less jargon. Less judgement. More understanding.

If today’s article helped you understand yourself, or someone you love, then I’ve done exactly what I set out to do.

Subscribe for free

If you’d like to keep reading, subscribe for free and I’ll send every new article straight to your inbox.

Subscribe now

Share this article

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The Kettle’s On

If you’d like to go a little deeper, the kettle’s on.

I’ve put together exclusive articles, behind-the-scenes updates and extra content for paid subscribers. And as a little thank you for being here today, you can enjoy 20% off your first year.

Get 20% off for 1 year

Buy Me a Tea

If today’s article made you stop, think, or simply helped you feel a little less alone, you can always buy me a tea.

Every cuppa helps keep the kettle on while I disappear down another psychology rabbit hole... so I can come back and explain it in plain English.

Buy Me a Tea ❤️

Whatever brought you here today, I’m really glad you stopped by.

Until next time,

Kel ❤️

Storm Psychology
by MindFullOfIt

Hey 👋

You’re not weak. You’re not broken. You’re not choosing this.

Before we dive into the psychology...

I need you to know these three things.

Now...

Let’s talk about why your emotions can feel so much bigger than everyone else’s.

Why Do My Emotions Feel So Intense?

Can I let you in on a little secret?

Emotional dysregulation is one of those psychology terms that sounds far cleverer than it actually is.

Honestly, if someone had said it to me a few years ago, I’d probably have smiled politely, nodded as though I understood... then immediately Googled it under the table because I wouldn’t have had the faintest clue what they were talking about.

Most people don’t know the name for it.

What they do know is what it feels like.

Maybe you’ve cried because somebody cancelled plans.

Maybe you’ve spent three days replaying a conversation that the other person has probably forgotten ever happened.

Maybe somebody has told you to “calm down.”

(Helpful. Cheers. I’ll just switch my emotions off then, shall I?)

Or maybe you’ve looked around and wondered why everyone else seems able to brush things off while your brain has decided this one tiny moment deserves its own Netflix documentary.

“One small moment for everyone else can feel like the biggest moment in the world to you.”

If any of that sounds familiar, pull up a chair.

You’re definitely not the only one.

And despite what you’ve probably been told over the years...

You’re probably not “too sensitive.”

You may simply have a nervous system that’s working a little differently.

Once you understand what’s actually happening, so many of those moments that have confused, frustrated or embarrassed you suddenly start making a lot more sense.

So... what actually is emotional dysregulation?

Despite the complicated name, emotional dysregulation is actually a surprisingly simple idea.

It doesn’t mean you have “too many” emotions.

It doesn’t mean you’re dramatic.

And it certainly doesn’t mean you’re broken.

It simply means your brain sometimes struggles to regulate the intensity of an emotional response.

Imagine emotions like the volume control on a radio.

For some people, disappointment turns the dial up to a four before gradually settling back down again.

For someone experiencing emotional dysregulation, that very same disappointment might shoot straight to a nine.

The situation hasn’t necessarily changed.

The emotion has.

“The problem usually isn’t that you feel emotions. It’s that your brain struggles to turn the volume back down.”

What Does Emotional Dysregulation Actually Feel Like?

One of the hardest things about emotional dysregulation is that it often leaves you questioning yourself.

You know the situation probably doesn’t deserve the reaction you’re having, yet your body didn’t get the memo.

The emotion is already there.

By the time your logical brain catches up, it’s usually trying to put the lid back on a saucepan that’s already boiling over.

That can be incredibly frustrating because people often assume emotional dysregulation means you’re constantly emotional.

It doesn’t.

Sometimes you can go days feeling perfectly fine.

Then something seemingly small happens, and it’s as though somebody has pressed the fast-forward button on your nervous system.

You might recognize some of these experiences:

• A cancelled plan doesn’t just disappoint you. It feels deeply personal.

• A small criticism stays with you for days, even though the other person has completely forgotten they said it.

• You replay conversations over and over, wondering if you upset someone.

• You cry more easily than the people around you, even when you’re trying not to.

• You become overwhelmed so quickly that you need to leave the room or be on your own.

• Anger arrives in seconds, then disappears just as quickly, often leaving guilt behind.

• You feel embarrassed by how intensely you’ve reacted, even though you couldn’t stop it.

• You apologize... a lot.

• You tell yourself you’re “being ridiculous” while still feeling completely unable to change how you feel.

“The hardest part isn’t feeling emotions. It’s feeling judged for having them.”

For many people, that’s the part nobody sees.

They only notice the tears.

The frustration.

The withdrawal.

The shutdown.

What they don’t see is the exhausting amount of energy it takes to keep trying to regulate emotions that already feel like they’re turned up far louder than everyone else’s.

Why Does It Happen?

This is the question everyone asks.

Unfortunately, there isn’t one simple answer.

Emotional dysregulation isn’t a diagnosis in itself. It’s something that can happen alongside lots of different conditions and life experiences.

For some people, it’s linked to the way their brain has always processed emotions.

For others, it develops after long periods of stress, trauma or living in survival mode.

ADHD

People often think ADHD is simply about attention.

It isn’t.

One of the most overlooked parts of ADHD is how strongly emotions can be experienced.

A minor frustration can suddenly feel enormous.

Rejection can feel devastating.

Waiting, interruptions or unexpected changes can trigger emotions that seem completely out of proportion to everyone else, even though they feel painfully real to the person experiencing them.

Autism

Many autistic people experience emotions very deeply.

Changes in routine, sensory overload, misunderstandings or feeling overwhelmed can all make emotional regulation much more difficult.

When your brain is already working incredibly hard to process the world around you, there simply isn’t always much left in the tank for managing intense emotions as well.

Trauma

Trauma changes the way the brain responds to perceived threats.

When you’ve spent long periods feeling unsafe, your nervous system learns to react quickly in order to protect you.

The difficulty is that it sometimes continues reacting as though you’re in danger, even when you aren’t anymore.

Anxiety and chronic stress

When your brain spends most of its time on high alert, it doesn’t take much to tip it over the edge.

It’s a bit like carrying a glass that’s already full.

The smallest extra drop can cause it to overflow.

Depression and burnout

Many people associate depression with sadness.

In reality, it can also make emotions much harder to regulate.

Burnout has a similar effect.

When you’re mentally and physically exhausted, your emotional “buffer” becomes much smaller.

Things you would normally cope with suddenly feel impossible.

Borderline Personality Disorder

Emotional dysregulation is also one of the core features of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).

People living with BPD often experience emotions that are exceptionally intense and can change rapidly. These experiences are very real and can be deeply distressing, which is why compassionate assessment and support are so important.

Before we go any further, I want you to remember this: emotional dysregulation doesn't tell us what someone has. It tells us how their emotional system is responding.

... Can we stop blaming you for just a moment?

How long have you been apologizing for feelings you never chose to have?

Breaking the Cycle

By now, you might be wondering, “If my brain is reacting like this... how do I stop it?”

The first thing to know is that trying harder usually isn’t the answer. If you’ve spent years telling yourself to calm down, stop crying, stop overthinking or “just get on with it”, you’ve probably already discovered that it doesn’t work very well. That’s because emotional dysregulation isn’t a lack of willpower. It’s your nervous system doing exactly what it believes it needs to do.

The difficulty is that many people become trapped in a cycle without ever realizing it. Something happens. A comment. A disagreement. A last-minute change of plans. Your emotions surge before you’ve even had time to think. Then, almost as quickly, comes the guilt.

“Why did I react like that?”

“I’m so embarrassing.”

“I should know better by now.”

Those thoughts don’t calm your nervous system down. They pile more pressure onto it. You start pushing your feelings away, trying to hide them or promising yourself that next time you’ll cope better. But underneath it all, your brain is still trying to process what happened.

“You don’t break the cycle by fighting your emotions.

You break it by understanding them.”

By the time the next stressful situation comes along, you’re already emotionally exhausted. It doesn’t take much to tip the balance because you’ve been carrying yesterday’s emotions into today.

That’s how the cycle keeps itself going.

The good news is that cycles can be broken. Not by pretending your emotions don’t exist, and not by expecting yourself to be calm all the time, but by understanding what’s happening instead of fighting yourself every step of the way.

So... What Actually Helps?

I wish I could tell you there was one simple trick that made emotional dysregulation disappear forever. If there were, I’d happily tell you about it.

The reality is that emotional regulation isn’t about becoming emotionless. It’s about giving your brain and body the best possible chance to recover when life becomes overwhelming.

One of the most helpful things you can do is begin noticing your triggers. Are there certain situations that leave you feeling particularly overwhelmed? Is it criticism? Conflict? Last-minute changes? Feeling rejected? Becoming overstimulated? Recognizing those patterns isn’t about avoiding life. It’s about understanding how your own mind works.

It also helps to replace judgement with curiosity. Instead of asking yourself, “What’s wrong with me?”, try asking, “What happened just before I started feeling like this?” That small change might not seem like much, but it shifts your focus away from blame and towards understanding. Over time, that can completely change the relationship you have with your emotions.

Looking after your body matters more than most people realize too. Poor sleep, stress, hunger, illness and sensory overload all make emotional regulation more difficult. If your nervous system is already running on empty, it has far less capacity to deal with life’s inevitable ups and downs. Sometimes the kindest thing you can do isn’t finding another coping strategy. It’s recognizing that you’re exhausted.

“Healing doesn’t begin when the emotions disappear.

It begins when the shame does.”

For some people, talking therapies provide a safe space to understand where these emotional patterns came from and learn new ways of responding to them. For others, medication may be appropriate, particularly when emotional dysregulation is linked to conditions such as ADHD, anxiety or depression. There isn’t one answer that fits everyone, and that’s okay.

The aim isn’t to stop having emotions.

The aim is to stop feeling as though you’re constantly fighting against them.

One Last Thing Before You Go...

If you’ve recognized yourself anywhere in this article, I hope you’ll leave with one thing.

For years, you may have believed you were too emotional. Too sensitive. Too dramatic. Too much. Those are labels that many people carry around for far longer than they should, often because they never understood why their emotions felt so different in the first place.

The truth is that emotions aren’t character flaws. They’re messages. Sometimes those messages arrive quietly. Sometimes they arrive like a storm. Neither makes you a bad person.

Understanding emotional dysregulation won’t stop every difficult day. There will still be moments when you feel overwhelmed, frustrated or tearful. There will still be days when your emotions seem to arrive before your thoughts do. But understanding what’s happening changes something important. It replaces confusion with knowledge and shame with compassion.

“You were never ‘too much’.

You were carrying more than people could see.”

So the next time you catch yourself thinking, “Why am I like this?”, I hope you’ll remember that there is often a reason. Your brain and nervous system are responding in the only way they know how, and that doesn’t make you weak or broken.

It simply means you deserve the same patience and kindness that you so freely give to other people.

...

If you’ve made it this far, thank you.

I know there are thousands of articles you could have spent your time reading today, so the fact you chose to spend a little of that time here genuinely means a lot to me.

I started Storm Psychology because I wanted to make psychology feel a little less intimidating and a lot more human. Less jargon. Less judgement. More understanding.

If today’s article helped you understand yourself, or someone you love, then I’ve done exactly what I set out to do.

Subscribe for free

If you’d like to keep reading, subscribe for free and I’ll send every new article straight to your inbox.

Subscribe now

Share this article

Know someone who needed to read this? Sharing articles like this is one of the biggest ways you can help Storm Psychology reach the people who need it most.

Share

The Kettle’s On

If you’d like to go a little deeper, the kettle’s on.

I’ve put together exclusive articles, behind-the-scenes updates and extra content for paid subscribers. And as a little thank you for being here today, you can enjoy 20% off your first year.

Get 20% off for 1 year

Buy Me a Tea

If today’s article made you stop, think, or simply helped you feel a little less alone, you can always buy me a tea.

Every cuppa helps keep the kettle on while I disappear down another psychology rabbit hole... so I can come back and explain it in plain English.

Buy Me a Tea ❤️

Whatever brought you here today, I’m really glad you stopped by.

Until next time,

Kel ❤️

Storm Psychology
by MindFullOfIt

I Thought This Was Just My Body

I can’t remember a time before my ankles looked like this.

Not because I wasn’t paying attention, but because they’d always been that way. When something has been part of your body for as long as you can remember, you stop questioning it. You assume it’s normal. Or, in my case, you assume it’s simply what happens when you’re the bigger girl.

It would take more than twenty years before I discovered there might have been another explanation. Until then, I believed I was just overweight.

I was teased at school for my weight, and puberty felt like my body took the phrase “grow into yourself” as a personal challenge and went in every direction instead. Looking back now, I realize I spent years trying to understand my body through the only explanation I thought existed.

As I got older, little things started to stand out. I wanted the same knee-high boots everyone else was wearing, but even the extra-wide ones from Evans wouldn’t zip over my calves. If you know, you know. Over-sized tops weren’t a fashion choice either; they were simply the only way I could get the sleeves over my upper arms. I laughed them off as my “bingo wings” before anyone else had the chance to.

None of it felt unusual because it had always been my normal. I never questioned why my body carried weight differently. I just assumed I needed to lose more of it.

When I was twenty-one, I dressed as a pirate for my birthday and went out wearing a skirt and tights. At some point during the night, someone looked at my legs and told me I was brave for wearing them.

I knew exactly what they meant.

They weren’t admiring my confidence.

They were telling me my legs were too big to be seen.

I told them exactly where to go and carried on with my night. At least outwardly. The funny thing about cruel comments is that they rarely stay where they were spoken.

Some people forget the words they say within minutes. The person they say them to sometimes carries them for a lifetime.

Twenty-three years later, I can still hear that comment.

It wasn’t the only one, but it became another piece of evidence supporting a story I’d already started believing about myself. Looking back now, I don’t think it changed how I saw my legs.

I think it simply confirmed they were something to hide.

The Appointment That Followed Me Home

In my early twenties, I finally asked for help.

I remember sitting in my GP’s office hoping someone might tell me there was a reason my body seemed so different from everyone else’s.

Instead, I heard six words that would quietly shape the next twenty years of my life.

“Eat less and exercise more.”

That was the advice.

No questions about why my weight seemed to sit differently. No conversation about why my legs and arms didn’t seem to respond like the rest of my body. Just six simple words that sounded perfectly reasonable.

I believed him because, at the time, why wouldn’t I? He was the professional. I went away determined to prove I could do it. I exercised, I ate less, I lost weight, and I did everything I thought I was supposed to do.

When nothing really changed, I didn’t question the advice.

I questioned myself.

I remember thinking that if I went back, he’d probably assume I hadn’t tried hard enough. So I didn’t. Instead, I carried those six words with me for more than twenty years, quietly collecting what I believed was evidence that they were right. Every failed diet, every over-sized top, every pair of boots that wouldn’t fit, and every disappointed glance in the mirror became another reminder that the problem must be me.

Sometimes the conversations that change our lives last less than ten minutes.

Looking back now, I don’t feel angry with that doctor. Awareness of lipoedema is still far lower than it should be, and many healthcare professionals receive very little training on the condition. It’s one of the reasons so many people spend years being treated for obesity before anyone considers there might be another explanation.

This isn’t about blaming one GP.

It’s about recognizing what happens when awareness doesn’t exist.

For me, the hardest part wasn’t hearing those six words. It was everything that came afterwards. Once I’d accepted that the problem was me, I stopped looking for any other explanation. Every time I struggled to lose weight from my legs, I didn’t question my body. I questioned my willpower. Over time, that story stopped feeling like an opinion and started feeling like a fact.

It would take another twenty years before I realized I hadn’t been looking for an excuse.

I’d been looking for an explanation all along.

Those are two very different things.

One Facebook Advert Changed Everything

If you’d asked me a few months ago how I expected to finally get some answers, I can promise you Facebook wouldn’t have been anywhere on the list.

I was mindlessly scrolling when an advert stopped me. It wasn’t the product that caught my attention. It was the woman’s legs.

I stopped scrolling and thought, “Hang on... she looks like me.”

Curiosity got the better of me, so I clicked.

That was the first time I’d ever come across the word lipoedema.

I’d never heard of it before. Nobody had ever mentioned it. Not at school. Not during twenty years of dieting. Not at the gym. Not during appointments with healthcare professionals. Nothing.

So I did what most of us do when we discover something that feels strangely familiar.

I disappeared down a rabbit hole.

The more I read, the quieter I got.

Cuffed ankles.

Difficulty losing weight from the legs.

Weight that seemed out of proportion to the rest of the body.

Upper arms.

Easy bruising.

Heavy, aching legs.

One by one, I found myself quietly whispering...

“That’s me.”

Sometimes recognition feels less like discovering something new... and more like finally finding the words for something you’ve lived with all your life.

Lipoedema is a long-term condition that causes an abnormal build-up of fat, usually in the legs, hips, buttocks and sometimes the arms. It almost exclusively affects women and often begins or becomes more noticeable around times of hormonal change, such as puberty, pregnancy or menopause. Unlike general body fat, the affected areas can respond very differently to weight loss, which is one of the reasons so many people spend years believing they’re simply not trying hard enough.

That doesn’t mean everyone with larger legs has lipoedema.

It doesn’t mean every symptom fits every person.

And it certainly doesn’t mean reading one article or seeing one advert is enough to diagnose yourself.

But for the first time in more than twenty years...

I wasn’t looking at someone else’s story.

I was looking at my own.

Looking Back Through Different Eyes

I left that rabbit hole with more questions than answers.

I still do.

I haven’t been diagnosed with lipoedema. As I write this, I’m still waiting for blood tests and a Doppler scan. I don’t know exactly what those appointments will tell me, and I’m trying hard not to jump to conclusions before the professionals do.

But something changed long before any diagnosis ever could.

For the first time in more than twenty years, I stopped looking at my body as though it had betrayed me.

Instead, I started wondering whether I’d been blaming the wrong person all along.

I found myself replaying memories I’d never questioned before. The boots that never fitted. The comments about my legs. The over-sized tops. The bruises that seemed to appear from nowhere. Last year I caught my leg and ended up with a bruise so spectacular it looked like it needed its own postcode. At the time, I laughed it off. Now I found myself looking back at all those moments through an entirely different lens.

I booked another appointment with my GP.

This time was different.

He listened.

He examined my legs, agreed there were features that could be consistent with lipoedema, and arranged blood tests to rule out other possible causes alongside a Doppler scan. For the first time, I felt like someone was investigating my body instead of simply weighing it.

While I wait, I’ve started wearing compression leggings.

I honestly didn’t expect much.

Instead, something surprising happened.

My legs feel lighter.

The heaviness has eased.

The swelling seems better.

Even if they turn out not to be the answer, they’ve made everyday life a little more comfortable, and right now I’ll happily take every small win I can get.

Sometimes healing begins the moment we stop treating ourselves like the enemy.

The biggest change, though, hasn’t been physical.

It’s been psychological.

The guilt has started to disappear.

For years, I genuinely believed I’d failed. Every diet that didn’t work felt like another reminder that I lacked willpower. Every failed attempt became another reason to be disappointed in myself.

Now, for the first time in decades, I’m beginning to wonder if I was trying hard enough all along.

Maybe my body wasn’t working against me.

Maybe it was asking a different question.

That single thought has changed the way I speak to myself far more than any number on the scales ever has.

The Future I Never Thought I’d Have

One of the things I wasn’t expecting to grieve was the future I’d quietly talked myself out of.

For years, I convinced myself that relationships simply weren’t for people who looked like me. It wasn’t that anyone had ever said those exact words. I’d just spent so long feeling embarrassed by my body that I couldn’t imagine somebody else seeing it any differently.

I avoided dating. I covered up, even in the middle of summer. I became so focused on changing my body that I never stopped to ask whether I was still allowing myself to live in it.

Then, while I was reading about lipoedema, I came across a photograph of a woman whose body looked remarkably like mine.

Standing beside her was her partner, looking at her with the kind of love I'd quietly convinced myself wasn't meant for someone who looked like me.

I can’t explain why that photograph affected me so much.

It wasn’t because I wanted her body.

It was because, for the first time, I realized somebody else already thought it was worthy of love.

Sometimes hope arrives disguised as somebody else’s ordinary life.

Around the same time, I started reading about the newer weight-loss injections. I’ll be honest, I’d never really seen them as something I wanted for myself. But as I learned more about lipoedema, I also discovered that some people were finding they helped alongside other treatments. Suddenly they weren’t just another headline in the news. They became another possible option.

Finding out they weren’t available to me, and that private treatment would cost hundreds of pounds every month, was disappointing.

Not because I was looking for a miracle.

Because, like anyone else, I wanted the chance to explore every option that might help.

The truth is, though, this journey was never really about becoming smaller.

It was about becoming kinder.

I want more years with my mum.

More years watching my son build his own life.

More ordinary days walking Eddie.

More mornings where I wake up and don’t immediately feel at war with my own reflection.

Perhaps that’s what I’ve really been searching for all along.

If You See Yourself In My Story

If parts of this story felt uncomfortably familiar, please don’t use my experience to diagnose your own.

Bodies are complicated, and there are many reasons why people struggle with swelling, pain, weight changes or disproportionate fat distribution. What this article can do, I hope, is encourage you to ask questions you may never have thought to ask before.

Speak to your GP.

Take photographs if your body changes over time.

Write your symptoms down.

And if you feel you’ve spent years blaming yourself, try to leave room for the possibility that the story might be more complicated than you’ve been led to believe.

As I write this, I’m still waiting.

I don’t know what my blood tests or Doppler scan will show.

I don’t know whether this journey ends with a diagnosis or another explanation entirely.

But I do know this.

For the first time in more than twenty years, I’ve stopped treating my body like the enemy.

And sometimes that’s where healing begins.

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Support The Work

Spend enough time online and you’ll eventually stumble across a quote telling you to keep pushing, never quit, or fight harder.

They’re usually paired with dramatic music, mountain summits, or someone standing triumphantly at the end of an impossible journey.

I understand why those messages exist. They can be inspiring, and for some people, they’re exactly what they need to hear.

But I’ve often wondered what happens to the people who aren’t standing on top of the mountain.

What about the person sitting on the edge of their bed, trying to gather enough energy to start the day?

What about someone quietly grieving a loved one, living with chronic illness, recovering from trauma, or trying to navigate anxiety that seems to have settled into every corner of their life?

Their story rarely looks cinematic.

Yet it may require just as much courage.

The Version of Strength We Rarely Talk About

Our culture tends to celebrate resilience once the story has a happy ending.

We admire the comeback.

We applaud the achievement.

We share the before-and-after photographs.

What we don’t often celebrate are the days in between.

The days when someone gets dressed despite feeling emotionally exhausted.

The days when answering a single text message feels like climbing a mountain.

The days when simply making dinner, taking medication, attending therapy, or showing up to work requires every ounce of energy they have left.

These moments rarely attract applause.

They aren’t dramatic enough to become inspirational stories.

But perhaps they should be.

Because resilience doesn’t only exist at the finish line.

More often than not, it lives quietly in the ordinary moments nobody else ever sees.

Sometimes resilience isn’t moving faster.

Sometimes it’s refusing to stop altogether.

Why We Feel Like We’re Failing

One of the most damaging myths about resilience is the belief that strong people never struggle.

Psychologically, this creates an impossible standard.

Instead of recognizing our difficult days as part of being human, we begin interpreting them as evidence that we’re somehow falling behind.

This is particularly common in people living with anxiety, depression, ADHD, autism, burnout, or chronic stress.

They compare their internal experience to everyone else’s external appearance.

The problem, of course, is that appearances tell us very little.

The colleague who seems confident may be battling panic attacks.

The friend who always makes everyone laugh may be carrying grief they’ve never spoken about.

The parent who appears to have everything under control may be running on three hours’ sleep and sheer determination.

We rarely see the storms other people are weathering.

So we assume we’re the only ones struggling.

When Slowing Down Isn’t Giving Up

There is an important difference between resting and surrendering.

Rest is intentional.

It’s what allows our minds and bodies to recover enough to keep going.

Elite athletes understand this better than anyone.

They don’t train at full intensity every single day because they know constant pressure eventually leads to injury.

Our nervous systems aren’t any different.

Periods of stress require periods of recovery.

Ignoring that reality doesn’t make us stronger.

It usually leaves us overwhelmed.

Sometimes the healthiest thing we can do isn’t push harder.

It’s acknowledge today’s weather and respond accordingly.

Some days will allow for giant leaps.

Others may only allow for one careful step.

Both are still movement.

The Storm Doesn’t Define You

One difficult season doesn’t tell the whole story of your life.

Neither does one anxious week.

One depressive episode.

One setback.

Or one year that didn’t unfold the way you’d hoped.

Storms have an uncomfortable way of convincing us they’ll last forever.

Psychology tells us something very different.

Our emotions are constantly changing.

Our circumstances evolve.

Our brains adapt.

Healing is rarely linear, but neither is suffering.

The storm you’re standing in today won’t necessarily be the one you’re standing in next month.

That’s why hope matters.

Not because it promises life will suddenly become easy.

But because it reminds us that difficult moments are experiences—not identities.

You don’t have to outrun every storm.

Some days, surviving it is proof of a strength

you can’t always see.

The Calm After the Storm

Perhaps we’ve been measuring resilience the wrong way all along.

Maybe it isn’t about never falling apart.

Maybe it isn’t about pretending everything is okay.

Maybe resilience is simply choosing not to let today have the final word.

It might look like asking for help.

Taking a break.

Trying again tomorrow.

Or getting through the next hour instead of worrying about the next year.

None of those choices are signs of weakness.

They’re signs that, despite everything life has placed in front of you, you’re still choosing to move toward tomorrow.

That deserves far more credit than we often give ourselves.

Because the strongest people aren’t always the ones who never struggle.

Sometimes they’re simply the ones who quietly keep going, even when nobody else notices.

And if that’s where you are today…

I hope you remember this.

You don’t have to outrun every storm.

Sometimes surviving it is more than enough.

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Before We Begin

This article feels a little different.

I’ve narrated this one because I wanted it to sound like the conversation that inspired it.

It started as a few thoughts about Substack. Somewhere between making notes and sitting down to write, I realized it wasn’t really about Substack at all.

It’s about what happens when we build something that matters to us, then feel guilty promoting it.

Whether you’re a writer, an artist, a musician, a photographer, a small business owner or simply someone trying to share work you care about, I have a feeling you’ll recognize parts of yourself in this.

If you’ve ever wondered why self-promotion feels so uncomfortable, why talking about your own work can leave you feeling guilty, or why it’s so easy to compare yourself with other creators, I hope this article helps you understand that you’re probably experiencing something far more human than you realize.

So... put the kettle on, press play if you’re listening along, and let’s talk about something I don’t think enough creators admit out loud.

It Was Never Just About the Money

When I joined Substack about sixteen months ago, I had one very simple goal.

If I could earn a little extra money each month from writing, I’d be happy.

That was it.

There wasn’t some grand plan to become a full-time writer. I wasn’t dreaming about huge audiences or bestseller lists.

Life was just... expensive.

I genuinely love my NHS job, but loving what you do doesn’t always mean it pays enough to carry everything life throws at you.

My mum had been seriously ill. Debt had quietly built up over the years and, like so many families, we were simply trying to make life feel a little less heavy.

So I thought maybe writing could help.

Maybe I could build a newsletter, earn a few extra pounds, and do something I’d enjoy at the same time.

It felt like a sensible idea.

What I never expected was to fall in love with it.

Not just with writing, but with the people.

The conversations.

The community.

The comments that simply said,

“I thought I was the only one.”

I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of reading those words.

Somewhere along the way, Storm Psychology stopped feeling like a hobby.

It became something I genuinely wanted to build.

Not because I wanted fame.

Not because I wanted to become rich.

Because I couldn’t stop wondering what it might become if I just kept showing up.

The funny thing is, I don’t think anyone plans to fall in love with creating.

You tell yourself it’s just a side project.

You’ll write a few articles.

See what happens.

Then, almost without noticing, one article becomes ten.

Ten somehow becomes a hundred.

You stop counting the hours because, quite honestly, you probably don’t want to know.

Ideas appear while you’re driving.

You rewrite titles while you’re making dinner.

You wake up at three in the morning because your brain has decided now is the perfect time to solve a paragraph you’ve been wrestling with all week.

One day you realize you’re no longer just writing articles.

You’re building something.

And somewhere along the way, you quietly become attached to what it could become.

Maybe one day it pays the bills.

Maybe one day you get to spend more time doing work that matters to you.

For a long time, I felt almost embarrassed admitting that.

As though wanting Storm Psychology to become financially sustainable somehow made it less genuine.

As though caring about money cancelled out caring about people.

It took me a while to realize those two things don’t have to compete.

You can genuinely want to help people.

You can genuinely love what you create.

And you can also hope that one day the thing you’ve poured your heart into gives something back.

I don’t think that’s greed.

I think that’s what happens when you believe in something you’ve built.

What I wasn’t prepared for was discovering that writing wasn’t actually going to be the hardest part.

The hardest part came after I pressed Publish.

The Guilt Nobody Warns You About

The strange thing is, writing was never the hardest part.

Researching wasn’t. Editing wasn’t. Even finding the confidence to press Publish became easier over time.

The part I still haven’t completely made peace with is what happens afterwards.

Sharing it.

Not once, but again a few days later. Then maybe a week after that.

Every single time, I find myself having the same conversation in my head.

“You’ve already posted this.”

“People are going to get fed up.”

“You’re filling everyone’s feed.”

“If they wanted to read it, they already would have by now.”

For a long time, I thought that voice was just me.

I assumed everyone else happily shared their work while I sat rewriting social media captions for the fifth time, worried I’d sound too pushy.

Then I started talking to other creators.

Writers. Artists. Musicians. Photographers. Pod-casters. Small business owners.

Different people.

Same feeling.

Almost all of them admitted they’d hesitated before telling people about something they’d spent hours, days or even months creating.

Not because they weren’t proud of it.

Because they were terrified of becoming... too much.

That fascinated me.

Not just as a writer, but as someone who spends a lot of time reading psychology.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized this wasn’t really a marketing problem.

It was a human one.

Most of us grow up hearing the same messages.

Don’t show off.

Don’t brag.

Don’t make everything about yourself.

Be humble.

They’re good lessons.

I genuinely believe they help us become kinder people, and I hope we never stop teaching them.

But then one day we decide to build something.

A newsletter.

A business.

A podcast.

Whatever it happens to be.

Suddenly, we’re expected to do something that feels completely at odds with everything we’ve been taught.

We have to tell people it exists.

Part of us knows people can’t support something they’ve never heard about.

Another part whispers...

“Yes... but don’t mention it too much.”

For a long time, I believed there was a magical point where good work simply found the right people.

I wanted to believe that because it meant I didn’t have to put myself out there.

The truth is a little less romantic.

People can’t discover work they never see.

That isn’t arrogance.

It’s reality.

Around the same time, I came across something psychologists call the spotlight effect, and it stopped me in my tracks.

The spotlight effect is our tendency to overestimate how much other people notice us. We imagine everyone is paying close attention to what we’re doing when, in reality, most people are busy thinking about their own lives.

As creators, that can become a real problem.

When I share one of my articles for the second or third time, my brain quietly convinces me everyone must be rolling their eyes.

“Here she goes again.”

But is that actually true?

Probably not.

Someone was at work.

Someone else was asleep on the other side of the world.

Someone was looking after a poorly child.

Someone had a hospital appointment.

Someone simply wasn’t online that day.

Their life didn’t pause because I pressed Publish.

Most people aren’t keeping a mental tally of how many times we’ve shared something.

They’re just living their lives.

And if they’re creators too...

There’s a good chance they’re having exactly the same conversation with themselves.

The Comparison We Never Talk About

If I’m honest, there have been moments over the last sixteen months where I’ve opened Notes, had a little scroll, and quietly thought to myself...

What am I missing?

I’ll spend days researching an article. I’ll read journal papers, fill pages with notes, rewrite sections because one sentence doesn’t quite sound right, redesign images three times, change the title more often than I’d like to admit, then finally press Publish and hope it reaches the people I wrote it for.

Sometimes it does.

Sometimes it barely leaves the starting line.

Then I’ll scroll a little further.

A selfie has thousands of likes.

A picture of someone’s dog is everywhere.

A “Dear Substack...” post has hundreds of comments.

Before I go any further, I want to make something clear.

This isn’t about those posts.

It’s about the conversation that quietly starts inside my own head.

“What am I doing wrong?”

Psychologists call this social comparison.

It’s something every single one of us does. Our brains naturally compare us with the people around us because that’s one of the ways we work out where we fit.

The problem is that the internet has changed who we’re comparing ourselves with.

Our “group” is no longer the fifty people in our village.

It’s millions of people online.

And that’s an impossible comparison to win.

Especially because we’re comparing completely different things.

I know how many evenings disappeared into one article.

I know how many drafts I deleted.

I know how many times I nearly convinced myself it wasn’t good enough.

I don’t know any of that about the person whose post has just reached ten thousand people.

I only see the finished result.

My brain fills in everything else.

“Maybe they’re just better at this.”

“Maybe everyone else understands how this works.”

“Maybe I’m wasting my time.”

The strange thing is, none of those thoughts arrive with evidence attached.

They arrive as feelings.

And feelings are incredibly convincing.

If you’ve ever found yourself comparing your work with someone else’s, you’re not failing.

You’re being human.

There’s another psychological bias quietly working in the background too.

It’s called negativity bias.

Our brains naturally pay more attention to negative experiences than positive ones. Thousands of years ago, that helped keep us alive.

Today, it means one person quietly unfollows.

You notice.

One article doesn’t perform as well as you’d hoped.

You notice.

One post disappears without much engagement.

You notice.

Meanwhile, someone messages to say your article helped them through a panic attack.

Someone else tells you they finally understood ADHD because of something you wrote.

Another person quietly becomes a paid subscriber because they believe in what you’re building.

Those moments matter.

But our brains are incredibly good at brushing straight past them in search of the next problem to solve.

We can receive twenty kind comments and still lie awake thinking about the one article that didn’t go anywhere.

I don’t think that’s because creators are ungrateful.

I think it’s because creators are human.

And then there’s something else I’ve been thinking about.

I don’t think we’re really comparing likes.

I think we’re comparing possibilities.

Every article carries a little bit of hope.

Maybe this one reaches someone who needs it.

Maybe this one gets shared.

Maybe this one brings in a new subscriber.

Maybe this one helps pay this month’s electricity bill.

Maybe this one proves all these evenings, weekends and early mornings are leading somewhere.

When another post takes off and ours quietly disappears, it’s easy to feel like we’ve lost something.

Maybe what we’ve really lost, at least for a little while...

...is hope.

I don’t think we talk about that nearly enough.

I Just Wanted to Make It Work

The strange thing is, this article started because I was thinking about Substack.

It ends somewhere completely different.

Because I don’t think this is really about one platform.

I think it’s about what happens when we care deeply about something we’ve created.

Whether that’s a newsletter, a podcast, a painting, a business or a community project, I suspect the feelings are remarkably similar.

We create because we love it.

Then, somewhere along the way, we realize loving something and building something aren’t quite the same thing.

Building asks more of us.

It asks us to keep showing up when an article disappears into the void.

It asks us to create the next thing even when the last one didn’t do what we’d hoped.

And perhaps hardest of all...

It asks us to let go.

Once I press Publish, the article no longer belongs only to me.

Some people will read it.

Some people won’t.

Some people will scroll straight past.

Someone else might send it to a friend who desperately needed it.

I don’t get to choose.

All I get to choose is whether I keep showing up.

I often think about the people who’ve chosen to support Storm Psychology.

There aren’t hundreds of paid subscribers.

Not yet.

But every single one has meant more to me than they’ll probably ever realize.

Of course the financial support helps. I’d never pretend otherwise.

Life is expensive.

Debt is real.

Caring responsibilities don’t disappear because you’ve found something you love doing.

If you’ve followed Storm Psychology for a while, you’ll know the last year hasn’t exactly been quiet. Between looking after Mum, unexpected vet bills for Eddie, and everything else life has thrown our way, I’ve been reminded more than once why I started this in the first place.

I never wanted to become rich.

I just wanted a little more breathing room.

But if I’m honest...

The money has never been the first thing I think about.

The first thought is always the same.

“Someone believes in this.”

When you’ve spent months quietly building something that only existed in your own head, that’s an incredibly powerful feeling.

Sometimes belief is the thing creators are running out of long before money.

Looking back now, I have to laugh.

I honestly thought I was signing up to write articles.

I didn’t realize I’d also be learning about marketing, search engines, branding, audio narration, social media, thumbnails...

...or that I’d spend so much time turning everything I’d learnt about psychology back on myself.

It’s one thing understanding concepts like social comparison, negativity bias and the spotlight effect in a textbook.

It’s another thing catching yourself living them.

Somewhere along the way, this stopped becoming a lesson in writing.

It became a lesson in believing in something I’d built.

I’m still learning.

I still hesitate before I share a new article.

I still rewrite captions far more than I need to.

I still wonder whether people have seen enough of Storm Psychology this week.

I probably always will.

But now, when that little voice tells me I’m posting too much, I remind myself of something.

There are people out there who have no idea Storm Psychology exists.

They don’t know I’ve written about panic attacks.

Or ADHD.

Or schizophrenia.

Or burnout.

Not because they aren’t interested.

Because our paths simply haven’t crossed yet.

If I stay quiet because I’m frightened of looking annoying...

...they probably never will.

So I’ll keep pressing Post.

Not because I expect everyone to read what I write.

But because I hope the right person does.

Funny really.

I sat down to write about Substack.

Instead, I ended up writing about belief.

Maybe we’ve spent so long worrying about looking like we’re showing off that we’ve forgotten something important.

Believing in your own work isn’t arrogance.

Sometimes it’s responsibility.

I just wanted to make this work.

Maybe believing in something you’ve built was never something we were supposed to apologize for after all.

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The audio begins with a short introduction before flowing into the article.

Why Do I Care So Much?

Understanding empathy, people-pleasing, emotional boundaries, and why caring can quietly become carrying.

If you’ve ended up here, there’s a good chance you’ve asked Google a question that was surprisingly difficult to put into words.

Maybe it was...

“Why do I care so much about everyone?”

Or...

“Why do I absorb other people’s emotions?”

Perhaps it was...

“Why do I replay conversations in my head?”

Or...

“Why do I feel guilty saying no?”

They sound like different questions.

Most of the time...

they’re really the same one.

If you’re anything like me, you notice things other people don’t.

Someone says they’re “fine” and you immediately suspect they’re about as fine as a British summer barbecue.

A friend goes quiet and you spend the rest of the day wondering if you’ve upset them.

Somewhere along the way...

you’ve become the person everyone comes to when life starts falling apart.

Congratulations.

You’ve accidentally been promoted to Head of the Unofficial Emotional Support Department.

For years, I assumed there was a simple explanation.

I was just empathetic.

As it turns out...

psychology has been quietly sitting in the corner muttering,

“Well... it’s a bit more complicated than that.”

It turns out we use the word empathy to describe all sorts of different experiences.

Sometimes it’s kindness.

Sometimes it’s compassion.

Sometimes it’s anxiety wearing empathy’s coat and hoping nobody notices.

And sometimes...

without ever meaning to...

caring slowly turns into carrying.

That’s what this article is really about.

Not how to care less.

The world has enough people who don’t notice when someone is struggling.

This is about understanding why caring can become so emotionally expensive...

...and how to keep your kindness without feeling responsible for carrying every storm that passes through someone else’s life.

So what do we actually mean by empathy?

Empathy gets blamed for almost everything.

Can’t stop worrying about people?

Empathy.

Cried because somebody else’s dog died in a film?

Empathy.

Spent three days wondering whether your colleague’s “See you tomorrow” sounded a bit... off?

Well...

not necessarily.

The funny thing is that we use the word empathy as though it explains everything...

...when it’s actually covering several very different experiences.

That’s important...

because some of those experiences help us build close relationships.

Others...

leave us completely exhausted.

Let’s start with empathy itself.

At its simplest, empathy is your ability to understand or share somebody else’s emotional experience.

If a friend tells you they’ve lost their job, empathy helps you recognize why they’re upset.

But even here...

psychology refuses to keep things simple.

There are two main types.

The first is cognitive empathy, which is really just a fancy way of saying,

“I understand why you feel like that.”

You can put yourself in somebody else’s shoes...

without actually climbing inside them.

The second is affective empathy.

This is where you don’t just understand somebody’s feelings...

you begin to feel a little of them yourself.

Their excitement lifts your mood.

Their sadness sits in your chest.

Their anxiety somehow ends up in your stomach before you’ve even realized what’s happened.

Neither of those is good or bad.

They’re simply different ways our brains connect with other people.

Then there’s compassion...

and I think this one deserves a better reputation.

Compassion doesn’t just notice suffering.

It asks,

“What would actually help here?”

It’s empathy that’s rolled its sleeves up.

The trouble starts when another process quietly joins the party.

Psychologists call it emotional contagion...

which sounds like something you should catch on public transport...

but thankfully isn’t.

It’s simply the way emotions spread between people.

Sit with someone who’s laughing...

and you’ll probably smile.

Spend enough time with someone who’s anxious...

and you might notice your own body becoming tense too.

Humans are remarkably good at tuning into one another...

often without even realizing it.

Most of the time...

that’s perfectly normal.

The difficulty comes when somebody else’s emotions stop feeling like theirs...

and start feeling like yours.

That’s where we meet something called personal distress.

And if you only remember one idea from this section...

make it this one.

Personal distress doesn’t say,

“I can see you’re struggling.”

It says,

“Now I’m struggling too.”

From the outside...

those two responses can look almost identical.

Both come from caring.

Inside your brain, though...

they’re very different experiences.

And that difference...

might explain why some people can support others without burning out...

...while others slowly find themselves carrying emotional weight they were never meant to carry.

When Caring Becomes Carrying

Nobody wakes up one morning and decides they’re going to spend the rest of their life worrying about everyone else.

It happens gradually...

almost without noticing.

What begins as kindness quietly gathers a few extra jobs along the way until, one day, you’re not just caring about people anymore...

you somehow feel responsible for them.

Part of that story probably begins with personality.

Some people seem to arrive in the world with their emotional volume turned up a little higher than everyone else’s.

They notice changes in tone...

awkward silences...

tired eyes...

forced smiles...

and the tiny shifts in atmosphere that other people walk straight past.

Research suggests that sensitivity varies from person to person, and there’s nothing unhealthy about that.

In many ways...

it’s a gift.

The world needs people who notice when somebody isn’t okay.

The trouble starts...

when noticing slowly becomes responsibility.

For some people, that shift begins in childhood...

although not always for the reasons we tend to imagine.

I think psychology sometimes gives the impression that there has to be one dramatic event explaining everything...

when real life is usually far less tidy than that.

Maybe somebody at home was ill.

Maybe money was tight.

Maybe there was constant tension that nobody talked about.

Or perhaps you simply grew up in a family where everyone looked after everyone else.

Children don’t sit around analyzing their childhood.

They’re far too busy asking whether they can stay up another ten minutes...

or sneak another biscuit before dinner.

What they are brilliant at...

is adapting.

If home feels unpredictable...

children adapt.

If keeping the peace seems important...

children adapt.

If being helpful earns praise or prevents arguments...

children adapt.

The remarkable thing about the brain is that it doesn’t stop to ask whether these strategies will still be useful thirty years later.

It simply learns what appears to work...

and quietly files it away under:

Important.

Keep doing this.

Before long...

paying attention to everybody else’s emotions no longer feels like something you’re doing.

It feels like...

who you are.

The child who instinctively watched people’s moods often becomes the adult who can sense tension the moment they walk into a room.

The child who learned to smooth things over becomes the adult who apologizes for things that were never really their fault.

The child who discovered that being useful felt safe...

may grow into the adult who feels strangely guilty the moment they stop helping.

Psychologists have a name for part of this process:

Hyper-vigilance.

It sounds rather dramatic...

but all it really means is that your brain has become exceptionally good at scanning for possible problems.

Imagine a smoke alarm that’s become so sensitive it goes off every time somebody burns the toast.

It’s trying to protect you...

it’s just become a little overenthusiastic.

That doesn’t mean everyone who cares deeply has experienced trauma.

And it certainly doesn’t mean every difficult childhood produces an overly caring adult.

Human beings are far too complicated for neat little stories like that.

Most of us are shaped by a mixture of personality...

life experiences...

relationships...

and the countless small lessons we never even realized we were learning.

What matters...

is recognizing the pattern.

Somewhere along the way...

many caring people stop asking,

“How is everyone else?”

and quietly start believing,

“How everyone else feels is my responsibility.”

They sound almost identical.

They aren’t.

That’s the moment...

caring quietly becomes carrying.

And carrying...

was never the job in the first place.

Putting the Bags Down

One thing that really started to annoy me while researching this article...

was the advice.

No matter where I looked, somebody was confidently telling people to...

“Set better boundaries.”

Which sounds wonderfully sensible...

until you realize almost nobody explains what that actually means.

It’s a bit like telling someone to...

“Be more confident.”

Or...

“Stress less.”

😂

Thanks.

I’ll get right on that.

The problem isn’t that caring people don’t want boundaries.

Most of us desperately do.

The problem is that we’ve quietly convinced ourselves boundaries and kindness can’t exist in the same room.

Somewhere along the way...

many of us started believing that saying no...

taking a break...

or not immediately fixing somebody else’s problem...

was the same thing as not caring.

It isn’t.

I think the confusion starts because caring and carrying feel almost identical at first.

If somebody you love is struggling...

of course you’re going to feel something.

You’d be worried if you didn’t.

The mistake...

is believing your job is to remove their pain...

instead of simply walking beside them while they carry it.

That’s a much heavier job.

And...

if I’m honest...

it’s one none of us are actually qualified for.

Take grief as an example.

If somebody loses a parent...

a partner...

or a close friend...

there isn’t a combination of perfect words that makes it hurt less.

We still try...

because that’s what caring people do.

But most of us have probably had that moment where we’ve lain awake afterwards wondering...

Did I say enough?

Should I have done more?

Should I check in again tomorrow?

There’s nothing wrong with checking in.

The problem...

is believing that if they’re still hurting...

you’ve somehow failed.

I wonder how many of us have spent years carrying responsibility...

that nobody ever asked us to carry.

Maybe...

that’s the question worth asking instead.

Not...

“How do I stop caring?”

But...

“Which parts of this were actually mine in the first place?”

Because they’re very different questions.

One of the biggest changes I ever made...

was realizing I could support somebody...

without taking ownership of what they were going through.

It sounds obvious written down...

but it certainly didn’t feel obvious at the time.

I honestly thought worrying proved I cared.

If I wasn’t thinking about people after work...

or replaying conversations on the drive home...

was I really doing enough?

The answer...

rather inconveniently...

was yes.

Worry and compassion aren’t the same thing.

Neither are guilt and kindness.

That’s where boundaries finally started making sense to me.

They weren’t walls to keep people out.

They were simply a way of remembering where somebody else’s life ended...

and mine began.

They allowed me to listen...

without feeling responsible for fixing everything.

To care...

without assuming every problem belonged in my backpack.

I still care.

Probably more than is sensible some days.

I still notice when people aren’t themselves.

I still worry occasionally.

I suspect I always will.

The difference...

is that I no longer believe every storm I notice...

is mine to stand in.

And strangely enough...

that hasn’t made me less compassionate.

It’s made me...

far more useful.

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Have you ever looked at your to-do list and felt like crying?

Not because there was anything particularly difficult on it.

In fact, most of it was made up of ordinary things. Reply to an email. Put the washing on. Book that appointment you’ve been meaning to sort out for weeks. Decide what’s for dinner. Tiny jobs that, on another day, you could probably do without giving them a second thought.

But today feels different.

Today, choosing what to have for dinner somehow feels like you’re negotiating a peace treaty between countries that haven’t spoken for centuries.

If you’ve found yourself wondering, “Why do I feel so overwhelmed all the time?” you’re far from alone. Whether you call it stress, anxiety, mental overload, burnout, ADHD overwhelm, autistic burnout, or simply feeling like you can’t cope anymore, the experience can feel remarkably similar. It’s as though your brain has quietly reached its limit, and even the smallest decision suddenly feels heavy.

One of the hardest things about overwhelm is that it rarely arrives with a dramatic warning. There isn’t usually a moment when trumpets sound and someone announces, “Congratulations! You’ve officially reached maximum capacity.” It builds quietly. Another responsibility. Another interrupted night’s sleep. Another worry. Another problem to solve. By the time you realize something is wrong, your mind has often been carrying far more than you realized.

That’s why people often feel guilty about being overwhelmed. They look at one small task and think, “Why can’t I just get on with it?” They compare themselves with people who seem to be coping just fine. They tell themselves they’re lazy, unmotivated, or somehow failing at being an adult.

Meanwhile, their brain has been trying to juggle family, money, appointments, unread messages, the strange noise the car started making last Tuesday, and the nagging feeling they’ve forgotten something important. They probably have forgotten something important. Unfortunately, remembering what it is has also been added to the to-do list.

But what if that isn’t the real problem?

What if the washing up, the email, or the shopping list isn’t actually what broke the camel’s back?

What if those things are simply the final raindrop in a bucket that’s been quietly filling for weeks, months, or even years?

In psychology, overwhelm isn’t a personality flaw. It’s often a sign that your brain is trying to deal with more information, more decisions, more emotions, or more pressure than it can comfortably organised in that moment. That can happen because of chronic stress, anxiety, burnout, grief, illness, caring responsibilities, major life changes, or simply the relentless pace of modern life. It can also happen more often for some neurodivergent people, including those with ADHD or autism, where everyday life may demand far more mental energy than other people realize.

Here’s the important thing. Feeling overwhelmed doesn’t automatically tell us why it’s happening. Two people can experience exactly the same feeling for completely different reasons. One person might be caring for an elderly parent. Another might be living with anxiety. Someone else might be recovering from grief, navigating burnout, or trying to manage an ADHD brain in a world that never seems to stop asking for one more thing.

Together, we’ll look at why even the simplest tasks can suddenly feel impossible, how stress, anxiety, burnout, ADHD and autism can all play a part, and most importantly, how to make life feel manageable again.

Because when everything feels like too much, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re failing.

Sometimes it simply means you’ve been carrying far more than anyone can see.

“The final straw is rarely the real problem. It’s simply the first thing your already overflowing mind can no longer carry.”

Why Does Everything Suddenly Feel Like Too Much?

Being overwhelmed doesn’t simply mean you’re busy.

Plenty of people are busy without feeling overwhelmed. Equally, you can have a relatively quiet day and still feel like you’re drowning.

The difference isn’t always how much you have to do.

It’s how much your brain believes it can cope with.

Imagine your mind as a bucket.

Every responsibility adds another drop.

An email.

A poor night’s sleep.

Worrying about money.

Looking after someone you love.

Trying to remember whether you replied to that message yesterday.

None of those things are enough to make the bucket overflow on their own.

But keep adding a little more, day after day, and eventually one tiny extra drop is enough to spill the whole thing.

That’s overwhelm.

“Overwhelm isn’t caused by the last drop. It’s caused by everything that came before it.”

Psychologists sometimes call this cognitive load. Don’t let the name put you off. It’s simply a way of describing how much information your brain is trying to juggle at once.

Your brain isn’t broken.

It’s overloaded.

The tricky part is that it isn’t just juggling practical jobs like paying bills or replying to emails. It’s also carrying invisible things. Worry. Grief. Guilt. That awkward conversation from yesterday. The hospital appointment next month. Whether your child is okay. Whether your mum is managing. Even trying to remember the password for the website that insists your last seventeen passwords weren’t good enough.

That’s why overwhelm is so easy to misunderstand. Someone might look at your diary and think, “That doesn’t look too bad.”

What they can’t see is everything your brain is carrying that never made it onto the calendar.

So why does your brain suddenly reach that point?

Your brain has an alarm system that’s been keeping humans alive for thousands of years.

When our ancestors came face to face with danger, their brains reacted instantly.

Run.

Fight.

Hide.

Freeze.

Psychologists call this the fight, flight or freeze response. It’s your body’s emergency mode. Instead of focusing on planning and problem-solving, your brain shifts its attention towards survival.

The trouble is, your brain doesn’t only respond to tigers.

It reacts in much the same way to deadlines, financial worries, relationship problems, caring responsibilities, poor sleep, or months of never quite feeling caught up.

It simply recognizes pressure.

When that alarm system stays switched on for too long, the part of your brain responsible for planning, organizing and making decisions starts to struggle.

Psychologists call these skills executive functions.

Forget the fancy name.

Think of it as your brain’s project manager. It’s the bit that keeps everything organised, decides what needs doing first, and stops you buying a paddle-board at two o’clock in the morning because it suddenly seemed like an excellent life choice.

When you’re rested, that project manager is brilliant.

When you’re overwhelmed...

...it’s as if they’ve quietly gone home without telling anyone.

Suddenly everything feels urgent.

Everything feels important.

Everything feels like it should have been done yesterday.

That’s why people often describe feeling “stuck.”

Not because they don’t care.

Because the part of the brain that normally creates order is running low on fuel.

Then there’s decision fatigue.

Every decision costs your brain a tiny amount of energy.

What shall I wear?

What shall I eat?

Should I reply now?

Do I need milk?

On a good day, those choices barely register.

On a difficult day, they stack up until even choosing a pasta sauce suddenly feels like an impossible decision.

Psychologists call this decision fatigue. The more decisions you’ve already made, the harder the next one becomes.

From the outside, people might simply see someone who’s become forgetful, emotional, irritable or unusually quiet.

What they don’t see is the brain working overtime behind the scenes, trying to keep everything from spilling over.

That’s why overwhelm can feel so lonely.

Everyone else sees the one thing you couldn’t do.

You’re painfully aware of the hundred things you’ve been trying to hold together all along.

“When your brain has spent all day surviving, even small decisions can feel enormous.”

Why Doesn’t Everyone Experience Overwhelm in the Same Way?

If overwhelm is something we all experience, why do some people seem to bounce back after a busy week while others feel completely wiped out?

The short answer is simple.

No two brains are the same.

Give ten people exactly the same day. The same workload. The same traffic. The same emails. The same crying toddler in the supermarket. By bedtime, you’ll have ten different experiences.

One person shrugs it off.

Another needs a quiet evening to recover.

Someone else lies awake replaying the whole day at three o’clock in the morning.

That’s because overwhelm isn’t just about what’s happening around you.

It’s also about what’s happening inside you.

If you live with anxiety, your brain is often scanning for problems before they’ve even happened. Imagine having a smoke alarm that’s a little too enthusiastic. Burn the toast and it’s already screaming. Living in that constant state of alert uses a huge amount of mental energy.

For people with ADHD, overwhelm often comes from the extra effort it takes to organize, prioritize and switch between tasks. The project manager we talked about earlier might be brilliant, creative and full of ideas, but keeping everything in order can take far more energy than other people realize.

For autistic people, overwhelm is often linked to sensory overload. Busy environments, bright lights, loud noises and constant social demands can drain mental energy long before the day is over.

Then there’s burnout. Burnout isn’t just feeling tired after a busy week. It’s what happens when life’s demands outweigh your chance to recover for weeks or months at a time.

And, of course, you don’t need a diagnosis at all.

Caring for someone you love. Living with chronic pain. Raising children. Worrying about money. Grieving. Working long hours.

Life has a remarkable way of quietly adding weight to your shoulders.

That’s why comparing yourself to other people is so unfair.

You can see what they’re carrying in their hands.

You can’t see what they’re carrying in their minds.

The colleague who seems calm might have had a full night’s sleep and a quiet weekend.

The colleague beside them might have spent the morning on the phone to the hospital after being awake most of the night with a poorly child.

From the outside, they both answered the same emails.

Inside, they started the day carrying completely different loads.

Overwhelm isn’t a competition.

Your brain doesn’t compare your struggles with everyone else’s before deciding you’ve had enough.

It simply responds to the load it’s carrying.

Maybe that’s a kinder way of looking at it.

Instead of asking,

“What’s wrong with me?”

Try asking,

“What have I been carrying that nobody else can see?”

“Stop comparing your bucket to someone else’s. You can’t see how much they’re already carrying, and they can’t see yours.”

So... What Actually Helps?

If you’ve been reading this article hoping I’d reveal the one magical trick that makes overwhelm disappear forever, I’m afraid I have some disappointing news.

I haven’t got one.

If I did, I’d probably be writing this from a beach somewhere instead of trying to remember where I left my cup of tea.

The truth is, overwhelm isn’t something you defeat once and never experience again. It’s part of being human. The goal isn’t to eliminate it. It’s to notice it earlier, understand it better, and stop it reaching the point where one unanswered email feels like the beginning of the apocalypse.

The first step is surprisingly simple.

Stop asking yourself,

“How do I get everything done?”

Instead ask,

“What’s the next thing my brain can realistically cope with?”

That small change matters.

The first question asks your brain to solve everything.

The second only asks it to take one step.

Another thing that genuinely helps is getting thoughts out of your head.

Not because writing a list magically solves your problems, but because your brain is a terrible storage cupboard.

It’s brilliant at having ideas.

It’s rubbish at remembering fifty of them while also trying to work out whether you bought milk.

Writing things down gives your brain permission to stop carrying everything at once.

Rest matters too.

Real rest.

The kind where your brain gets permission to stop scanning for the next problem. Whether that’s reading, gardening, walking the dog, gaming, or sitting quietly with a cup of tea doesn’t really matter.

What matters is giving your mind a chance to recover.

Rest isn’t a reward for finishing everything.

It’s one of the things that helps you finish anything at all.

And finally, be honest with yourself.

Sometimes the bravest sentence you can say is,

“I’m carrying too much.”

Not,

“I’m weak.”

Not,

“I’m failing.”

Just...

“I’m carrying too much.”

Because once you recognize that, you can start deciding what can wait, what can be shared, and what doesn’t actually belong on your shoulders in the first place.

You were never supposed to carry everything alone.

“You don’t always need a bigger bucket. Sometimes you simply need permission to put some of it down.”

Final Thoughts

Feeling overwhelmed doesn’t mean you’re broken.

It doesn’t mean you’re lazy, incapable, or failing at life.

More often than not, it means your brain has been trying to carry far more than anyone else can see.

The washing up was never really about the washing up.

The unanswered email was never really about the email.

They were simply the moments your mind quietly said,

“I can’t carry another thing.”

The more you understand what’s happening inside your brain, the easier it becomes to spot the signs before your bucket overflows. You begin to notice when you’re carrying too much, and you stop blaming yourself quite so quickly.

Storms are part of life.

Every single one of us gets caught in them from time to time.

But storms also pass.

When they do, we often realize something important.

It was never because we weren’t strong enough.

It was because we’d been trying to carry more than anyone should have to carry alone.

“Sometimes the strongest thing you can do isn’t carrying more. It’s recognizing you’ve carried enough for today.”

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Why Do I Care So Much?

Understanding Empathy, People-Pleasing, Emotional Boundaries, and Why Caring Can Become Carrying

MindFullOfIt

Jul 05, 2026

Why Do I Care So Much?

Understanding empathy, people-pleasing, emotional boundaries, and why caring can quietly become carrying.

If you’ve ended up here, there’s a good chance you’ve asked Google a question that was surprisingly difficult to put into words.

Maybe it was, “Why do I care so much about everyone?”

Or, “Why do I absorb other people’s emotions?”

Perhaps it was, “Why do I replay conversations in my head?” or “Why do I feel guilty saying no?”

They sound like different questions.

Most of the time...

they’re really the same one.

If you’re anything like me, you notice things other people don’t. Someone says they’re “fine” and you immediately suspect they’re about as fine as a British summer barbecue. A friend goes quiet and you spend the rest of the day wondering if you’ve upset them. Somewhere along the way, you’ve become the person everyone comes to when life starts falling apart.

Congratulations.

You’ve accidentally been promoted to Head of the Unofficial Emotional Support Department.

For years, I assumed there was a simple explanation.

I was just empathetic.

As it turns out, psychology has been quietly sitting in the corner muttering, “Well... it’s a bit more complicated than that.”

It turns out we use the word empathy to describe all sorts of different experiences. Sometimes it’s kindness. Sometimes it’s compassion. Sometimes it’s anxiety wearing empathy’s coat and hoping nobody notices.

And sometimes, without ever meaning to, caring slowly turns into carrying.

That’s what this article is really about.

Not how to care less.

The world has enough people who don’t notice when someone is struggling.

This is about understanding why caring can become so emotionally expensive, and how to keep your kindness without feeling responsible for carrying every storm that passes through someone else’s life.

What Do We Actually Mean by “Empathy”?

Empathy gets blamed for almost everything.

Can’t stop worrying about people? Empathy.

Cried because somebody else’s dog died in a film? Empathy.

Spent three days wondering whether your colleague’s “See you tomorrow” sounded a bit... off? Well... not necessarily.

The funny thing is that we use the word empathy as though it explains everything, when it’s actually covering several very different experiences.

That’s important because some of those experiences help us build close relationships.

Others leave us completely exhausted.

Let’s start with empathy itself.

At its simplest, empathy is your ability to understand or share somebody else’s emotional experience. If a friend tells you they’ve lost their job, empathy helps you recognize why they’re upset.

But even here, psychology refuses to keep things simple.

There are two main types.

The first is cognitive empathy, which is really just a fancy way of saying “I understand why you feel like that.” You can put yourself in somebody else’s shoes without actually climbing inside them.

The second is affective empathy. This is where you don’t just understand somebody’s feelings, you begin to feel a little of them yourself. Their excitement lifts your mood. Their sadness sits in your chest. Their anxiety somehow ends up in your stomach before you’ve even realized what’s happened.

Neither of those is good or bad. They’re simply different ways our brains connect with other people.

Then there’s compassion, and I think this one deserves a better reputation.

Compassion doesn’t just notice suffering. It asks, “What would actually help here?”

It’s empathy that’s rolled its sleeves up.

The trouble starts when another process quietly joins the party.

Psychologists call it emotional contagion, which sounds like something you should catch on public transport, but thankfully isn’t.

It’s simply the way emotions spread between people. Sit with someone who’s laughing and you’ll probably smile. Spend enough time with someone who’s anxious and you might notice your own body becoming tense too. Humans are remarkably good at tuning into one another, often without even realizing it.

Most of the time, that’s perfectly normal.

The difficulty comes when somebody else’s emotions stop feeling like theirs and start feeling like yours.

That’s where we meet something called personal distress, and if you only remember one idea from this section, make it this one.

Personal distress doesn’t say,

“I can see you’re struggling.”

It says,

“Now I’m struggling too.”

From the outside, those two responses can look almost identical. Both come from caring.

Inside your brain, though, they’re very different experiences.

And that difference might explain why some people can support others without burning out...

...while others slowly find themselves carrying emotional weight they were never meant to carry.

When Caring Becomes Carrying

Nobody wakes up one morning and decides they’re going to spend the rest of their life worrying about everyone else.

It happens gradually, almost without noticing. What begins as kindness quietly gathers a few extra jobs along the way until, one day, you’re not just caring about people anymore, you somehow feel responsible for them.

Part of that story probably begins with personality. Some people seem to arrive in the world with their emotional volume turned up a little higher than everyone else’s. They notice changes in tone, awkward silences, tired eyes, forced smiles and the tiny shifts in atmosphere that other people walk straight past. Research suggests that sensitivity varies from person to person, and there’s nothing unhealthy about that. In many ways, it’s a gift. The world needs people who notice when somebody isn’t okay.

The trouble starts when noticing slowly becomes responsibility.

For some people, that shift begins in childhood, although not always for the reasons we tend to imagine. I think psychology sometimes gives the impression that there has to be one dramatic event explaining everything, when real life is usually far less tidy than that. Maybe somebody at home was ill. Maybe money was tight. Maybe there was constant tension that nobody talked about, or perhaps you simply grew up in a family where everyone looked after everyone else.

Children don’t sit around analyzing their childhood. They’re far too busy asking whether they can stay up another ten minutes or sneak another biscuit before dinner. What they are brilliant at, though, is adapting.

If home feels unpredictable, children adapt.

If keeping the peace seems important, children adapt.

If being helpful earns praise or prevents arguments, children adapt.

The remarkable thing about the brain is that it doesn’t stop to ask whether these strategies will still be useful thirty years later. It simply learns what appears to work and quietly files it away under Important. Keep doing this.

Before long, paying attention to everybody else’s emotions no longer feels like something you’re doing. It feels like who you are.

The child who instinctively watched people’s moods often becomes the adult who can sense tension the moment they walk into a room. The child who learned to smooth things over becomes the adult who apologizes for things that were never really their fault. The child who discovered that being useful felt safe may grow into the adult who feels strangely guilty the moment they stop helping.

Psychologists have a name for part of this process: hyper-vigilance. It sounds rather dramatic, but all it really means is that your brain has become exceptionally good at scanning for possible problems. Imagine a smoke alarm that’s become so sensitive it goes off every time somebody burns the toast. It’s trying to protect you; it’s just become a little overenthusiastic.

That doesn’t mean everyone who cares deeply has experienced trauma, and it certainly doesn’t mean every difficult childhood produces an overly caring adult. Human beings are far too complicated for neat little stories like that. Most of us are shaped by a mixture of personality, life experiences, relationships and the countless small lessons we never even realized we were learning.

What matters is recognizing the pattern.

Somewhere along the way, many caring people stop asking, “How is everyone else?” and quietly start believing, “How everyone else feels is my responsibility.”

They sound almost identical.

They aren’t.

That’s the moment caring quietly becomes carrying.

And carrying was never the job in the first place.

Putting the Bags Down

One thing that really started to annoy me while researching this article was the advice.

No matter where I looked, somebody was confidently telling people to “set better boundaries.”

Which sounds wonderfully sensible until you realize almost nobody explains what that actually means. It’s a bit like telling someone to “be more confident” or “stress less.” Thanks. I’ll get right on that.

The problem isn’t that caring people don’t want boundaries. Most of us desperately do. The problem is that we’ve quietly convinced ourselves boundaries and kindness can’t exist in the same room. Somewhere along the way, many of us started believing that saying no, taking a break or not immediately fixing somebody else’s problem was the same thing as not caring.

It isn’t.

I think the confusion starts because caring and carrying feel almost identical at first. If somebody you love is struggling, of course you’re going to feel something. You’d be worried if you didn’t. The mistake is believing your job is to remove their pain instead of simply walking beside them while they carry it.

That’s a much heavier job.

And, if I’m honest, it’s one none of us are actually qualified for.

Take grief as an example. If somebody loses a parent, a partner or a close friend, there isn’t a combination of perfect words that makes it hurt less. We still try, because that’s what caring people do, but most of us have probably had that moment where we’ve lain awake afterwards wondering whether we said enough, whether we should have done more, or whether we ought to check in again tomorrow.

There’s nothing wrong with checking in.

The problem is believing that if they’re still hurting, you’ve somehow failed.

I wonder how many of us have spent years carrying responsibility that nobody ever asked us to carry.

Maybe that’s the question worth asking instead.

Not, “How do I stop caring?”

But, “Which parts of this were actually mine in the first place?”

Because they’re very different questions.

One of the biggest changes I ever made was realizing I could support somebody without taking ownership of what they were going through. It sounds obvious written down, but it certainly didn’t feel obvious at the time. I honestly thought worrying proved I cared. If I wasn’t thinking about people after work, or replaying conversations on the drive home, was I really doing enough?

The answer, rather inconveniently, was yes.

Worry and compassion aren’t the same thing.

Neither are guilt and kindness.

That’s where boundaries finally started making sense to me. They weren’t walls to keep people out; they were simply a way of remembering where somebody else’s life ended and mine began. They allowed me to listen without feeling responsible for fixing everything, to care without assuming every problem belonged in my backpack.

I still care.

Probably more than is sensible some days.

I still notice when people aren’t themselves. I still worry occasionally. I suspect I always will.

The difference is that I no longer believe every storm I notice is mine to stand in.

And, strangely enough, that hasn’t made me less compassionate.

It’s made me far more useful.

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Why humans are so bad at recognizing their own inner storms

A few weeks ago, I found myself sitting in a Teams meeting trying very hard to look interested and professional while secretly fighting for my life.

Not because the meeting was boring.

Not because I didn’t want to be there.

Because I was exhausted.

The kind of exhausted where your eyes feel like they’ve been lightly sandpapered. The kind where every yawn feels like a betrayal because you’re supposed to be paying attention, contributing, and showing up for the people who need you.

So there I was, flicking my camera on and off and hoping nobody noticed.

The strange thing is that if you’d asked me how I was doing, I probably would’ve said I was fine.

Not because I was trying to lie.

Because that’s what most of us say.

Fine.
Busy.
Getting there.
Can’t complain.
Living the dream.

The funny thing is that everybody knows these phrases aren’t always true. We hear them every day. We say them every day. They’re less answers and more social agreements. A way of saying, “I don’t really have time to explain everything that’s happened since Tuesday.”

The more I think about it, the more I realize that exhaustion has a public relations problem.

Most people imagine it as something obvious. They picture somebody lying in bed unable to move. They imagine tears, breakdowns, panic attacks, dramatic moments where a person finally reaches their limit.

Sometimes exhaustion looks like that.

Most of the time it doesn’t.

Most of the time it looks like somebody showing up.

Most of the time it looks like school runs, supermarket queues, packed lunches, spreadsheets, appointments, unpaid bills, overflowing inboxes, and trying to remember why you walked into the kitchen in the first place.

Most of the time it looks remarkably normal.

Most people aren’t falling apart.
They’re carrying.

Which raises an interesting question.

If exhaustion is so common, and if so many people are carrying more than they admit, why are we so bad at recognizing it in ourselves?

Why Are Humans So Bad At Reading Their Own Weather?

One of the strangest things about exhaustion is that most people can recognize it almost instantly in somebody else.

We notice when a friend becomes quieter than usual, when a colleague seems distracted, or when somebody who normally replies within minutes suddenly takes days to answer a message. We notice when somebody who usually laughs easily seems distant and preoccupied. From the outside, the signs are often surprisingly obvious.

Yet when exactly the same things happen to us, we come to completely different conclusions.

Instead of thinking, “I might be exhausted,” we think, “I need to get organised.”

Instead of thinking, “I’m carrying too much,” we think, “I need to try harder.”

Instead of thinking, “Maybe I need a break,” we think, “Maybe I need to stop being lazy.”

I’ve always found that fascinating because if your best friend phoned you and described exactly the same symptoms, you’d probably be kind. You’d reassure them, remind them that life has been busy, and tell them they’re doing the best they can with what they’ve got.

Meanwhile, you’re standing in your kitchen trying to put the butter lid on the milk tub and wondering whether you’ve somehow become incompetent.

Yes, that actually happened.

The milk survived.

My dignity took slightly longer to recover.

Most people don’t see moments like that and think, “Perhaps I’m carrying too much.”

They think:

“What is wrong with me?”

The forgotten appointment becomes proof they’re disorganized. The unanswered message becomes proof they’re unreliable. The neglected garden becomes proof they’re failing at adulthood.

Psychologically, human beings tend to judge themselves differently than they judge other people. We know our intentions, the jobs we haven’t finished, the emails we haven’t answered, and the promises we’ve quietly postponed. When somebody else struggles, we see context. We see pressure, responsibility, and difficult circumstances.

When we struggle, we often skip straight past context and head directly for self-criticism.

That’s where exhaustion becomes sneaky.

It doesn’t just make us tired.

It changes the stories we tell ourselves.

The behavior stays the same.

The explanation changes.

And once that happens, exhaustion becomes much harder to recognize, not because the signs aren’t there, but because we’ve convinced ourselves they mean something else.

Sometimes the problem isn’t the exhaustion.

It’s the story we tell ourselves about it.

The “One More Week” Trap

If exhaustion has a catchphrase, it’s probably this:

“Things will calm down after this week.”

We’ve all said it.

After this shift.

After this deadline.

After this appointment.

After this bill.

After this one thing.

The problem is that life has a remarkable ability to replace one responsibility with another. You finish the paperwork and the car starts making a noise. You survive a busy month at work and somebody gets ill. You finally get a free weekend and remember the garden now looks like it belongs in a wildlife documentary.

Life doesn’t really calm down.

It changes shape.

Psychologists sometimes refer to this as optimism bias. Human beings naturally assume that future circumstances will be easier to manage than current ones. We imagine we’ll have more time next month, more energy next week, and fewer responsibilities once we get through whatever is in front of us right now.

The trouble is that next week eventually becomes this week.

And somehow we’re still saying the same thing.

One more week.

One more push.

One more thing.

Sometimes that’s perseverance.

Sometimes it’s resilience.

And sometimes it’s self-neglect wearing a respectable outfit.

The difficult part is that nobody notices when that line gets crossed because, from the outside, you’re still functioning. You’re still showing up, paying bills, helping people, and keeping everything moving.

And functioning can hide a lot.

We tend to notice the breakdown and miss the build-up.

Why Small Things Start Feeling Big

One of the strangest things about exhaustion is that it rarely attacks the big tasks first.

Most people can still get up, go to work, care for their families, and do the things that absolutely have to be done. Instead, exhaustion tends to show up in smaller places. The unanswered text message. The phone call you’ve been meaning to make. The email that somehow feels more complicated than it should.

People often find this confusing. If you’re capable of holding down a job, paying bills, and navigating everyday life, why does replying to a message suddenly feel impossible?

The answer lies in how the brain manages energy.

When we’re under prolonged pressure, attention, decision-making, and emotional energy become valuable resources. The brain starts looking for shortcuts, not because it’s lazy, but because it’s efficient.

That’s why somebody can spend an entire day functioning at work and then stare at a simple message from a friend feeling completely overwhelmed by the thought of replying.

From the outside it makes no sense.

From the inside it often makes perfect sense.

Have you ever stood in a supermarket staring at a shelf of options and felt irrationally annoyed that food requires choosing? Or found yourself opening the fridge repeatedly despite knowing there is nothing new inside?

These aren’t character flaws.

They’re clues.

Clues that your mental battery may be running lower than you realize.

When Carrying Becomes Normal

Human beings are remarkably adaptable.

It’s one of our greatest strengths.

It’s also one of our biggest weaknesses.

Think about something that once felt overwhelming. A new job. Caring for somebody you love. A health problem. A financial worry. A responsibility you never expected to have.

When it first arrived, it probably occupied a huge amount of space in your mind. Then something strange happened.

You got used to it.

Not because it became easier.

Because human beings adapt.

That’s how parents keep parenting through sleepless nights. It’s how carers keep caring. It’s how people survive grief, illness, financial hardship, and all the other storms life occasionally throws at them.

The problem is that adaptation can make unhealthy situations feel normal.

A few months ago something felt overwhelming.

Today it feels routine.

Not because the pressure disappeared.

Because you’ve been carrying it for so long that it no longer feels unusual.

Eventually we stop asking:

“Is this healthy?”

and start asking:

“Is this normal?”

Those are very different questions.

One of the saddest phrases I hear is:

“Everyone’s tired.”

They’re usually right.

But if everyone in a room has a headache, it doesn’t suddenly become healthy. It simply means lots of people are struggling.

The same thing applies to exhaustion.

Just because something is common doesn’t mean it’s harmless.

Why Are So Many People Exhausted Right Now?

The more people I speak to, the more I hear the same story told in different ways.

What strikes me isn’t that people are failing.

It’s that they’re trying.

They’re trying to earn enough money to live, support their families, care for ageing parents, raise children, maintain relationships, stay healthy, stay informed, and somehow keep everything moving forward at the same time.

And they’re doing all of this in a world that constantly seems to ask for more. More time, more attention, more patience, more flexibility, more money, more energy. Sometimes it feels as though life has quietly become a subscription service where the price keeps increasing and nobody remembers signing up.

What I’ve noticed is that exhaustion isn’t always about doing too much. Sometimes it’s about giving too much. Giving energy, care, emotional support, patience, and time until, little by little, there’s less left in the tank than we realize.

The strange thing is that most people don’t notice it happening. Nobody wakes up one morning and decides to empty themselves out. It happens gradually, one favor, one responsibility, one act of kindness at a time. A lift here. A phone call there. A problem solved. A worry absorbed. A promise made.

Then one day you realize you’ve become the person everybody turns to, while quietly wondering who you’re supposed to turn to.

That’s why so many people describe a kind of tiredness that sleep doesn’t seem to fix. It’s not always physical exhaustion. Sometimes it’s the exhaustion of responsibility, emotional labor, and carrying worries that never quite leave your mind, even when you’re supposed to be resting.

I think that’s why so many people feel stuck. They’re waiting for a moment when life finally eases off, but life rarely works like that. Responsibilities don’t line up neatly and take turns. They arrive all at once, competing for the same time, energy, and attention.

Maybe the real question isn’t:

Why are people so exhausted?

Maybe it’s:

How could they not be?

People aren’t weak.

They’re carrying more than most people realize.

What Actually Helps?

One of the things that frustrates me about modern advice is that it often assumes people can simply stop.

Stop working.

Stop caring.

Stop carrying.

Stop doing.

As though exhaustion is always the result of poor choices rather than the reality of modern life.

For many people, stopping isn’t realistic. The bills still need paying, the children still need collecting, the shift still needs covering, and the dog still needs walking. Life rarely pauses long enough for recovery to happen neatly, which is why so much advice can feel disconnected from reality.

The people reading articles about exhaustion are often the same people holding everything together. They’re not looking for a three-week retreat in the mountains or a wellness guru telling them to wake up at 5am and meditate beside a waterfall. They’re trying to work out how to get through Thursday without accidentally putting the butter lid on the milk again.

That’s why I don’t think the answer is always to stop all the plates spinning.

For many people, that’s impossible.

I think the better question is:

Which plates actually need spinning?

Exhaustion has a habit of convincing us that everything is urgent. Every email feels important. Every task feels essential. Every responsibility demands attention right now. When we’re overwhelmed, the brain becomes remarkably bad at telling the difference between what genuinely matters and what is simply making the most noise.

Maybe the garden can wait another week.

Maybe the perfectly organised house isn’t the emergency your brain is insisting it is.

Maybe the pressure you’re putting on yourself is heavier than the pressure anybody else is placing on you.

If you can’t stop all the plates spinning, perhaps the goal isn’t to keep adding more.

Perhaps it’s to gently place one or two down for a while.

Not forever.

Just long enough to catch your breath.

Because that’s not failure.

That’s maintenance.

The same principle applies when somebody we care about is struggling.

A few years ago, I probably would’ve told you that the best way to help somebody was to have the right advice, the right words, or the perfect solution.

I don’t think that anymore.

Life has a habit of teaching us that most people already know what they’re supposed to be doing. They know they should rest. They know they should ask for help. They know they should be kinder to themselves.

The problem usually isn’t a lack of information.

It’s a lack of space.

That’s why one of the kindest things another human being can do is simply notice.

A simple:

“You seem like you’ve got a lot on your plate lately.”

can carry far more weight than people realize.

Not because it solves anything.

Because it tells somebody they’ve been seen.

Most exhausted people become experts at looking fine. They go to work. They reply to messages. They make jokes. They ask other people how they’re doing. From the outside, everything appears normal, which means that when somebody notices the effort underneath all of that, it matters.

And perhaps that’s where active listening becomes so important.

People often confuse hearing with listening. We nod at the right moments, wait for pauses in conversation, and think about what we’re going to say next. On the surface it looks like listening, but often we’re only hearing enough to prepare our response.

Real listening means becoming genuinely interested in what life feels like from the other person’s perspective. It means asking questions because you want to understand, not because you’re steering the conversation towards a solution. It means allowing somebody to explain what they’re carrying without immediately comparing it to your own experiences or searching for ways to fix it.

That can be difficult because most of us want to help.

The intention is kind.

The problem is that not every difficult situation has a quick solution.

Sometimes the bills still need paying.

Sometimes the health problem is still there.

Sometimes life is simply hard.

In those moments, what people often need most isn’t fixing.

It’s understanding.

Being heard is one of the most underrated forms of support we can offer another human being.

Sometimes people don’t need somebody to remove the storm.

They just need somebody willing to sit beside them while it rains.

Sometimes people don’t need fixing.

They need noticing.

The Weather Can Change

If you’ve recognized yourself anywhere in this article, I want to leave you with one final thought.

Throughout this piece, we’ve talked about exhaustion as though it’s a storm. Not because storms are dramatic, but because they often arrive so gradually that we don’t fully notice what’s happening until we’re already standing in the middle of them.

Most people don’t wake up one morning and suddenly become exhausted.

A difficult week becomes a difficult month. A temporary problem becomes a permanent feature of everyday life. Responsibilities accumulate. Pressures overlap. Things that once felt unusual slowly become normal.

That’s one of the reasons exhaustion can be so difficult to recognize.

By the time many people notice it, they’ve already adapted to it.

They’ve become used to functioning while tired.

Used to pushing through.

Used to telling themselves they’ll rest when things calm down.

And perhaps that’s the real reason recognizing exhaustion matters.

Not because you’re weak.

Not because you’re failing.

Not because you’ve done anything wrong.

But because it’s difficult to navigate the weather when you’ve convinced yourself the storm isn’t there.

You don’t get extra points for pretending the rain isn’t falling. You don’t win a medal for struggling in silence. And carrying everything by yourself isn’t proof of strength.

More often than not, it’s simply proof that you’ve been carrying everything by yourself.

If there is one thing I’d like people to take away from this article, it’s that exhaustion isn’t always a sign that you’re doing something wrong.

Sometimes it’s a sign that you’ve been doing too much, for too long, without enough opportunities to put any of it down.

So if life feels heavy right now, perhaps this is your reminder to give yourself the same understanding you’d offer somebody else.

The same patience.

The same compassion.

The same grace.

Because storms pass.

Weather changes.

And no matter how normal carrying everything has become, you were never supposed to carry it all alone.

🌩️🫶

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Now go drink some water, unclench your jaw, and stop carrying everything by yourself for five minutes.

You’ve earned at least that much.🌩️🫶