.

For my youngest son, the biggest obstacle isn't the altitude or the terrain. It's the slick wall.

For the past two years, my eight-year-old son, Lino, has struggled with the very first event: a steep, Ninja Warrior-style wall. This year, I suggested we get there early and figure it out.

He declined. "I don't need it. I'm already ready." I admired the confidence. He knew the wall from past years, and he knew himself. He was certain he could do it.

When the race started, it looked like he was right. He charged across the start line with his partner and hit the wall with total authority. Faster and stronger than last year. And then.... he slammed face-first into it, sliding down like Wile E. Coyote after another failed scheme.

He tried again. Same strategy, same result. Over and over. By the fourth attempt, his confidence had evaporated, replaced by tears. After about eight attempts, and a boost from his partner, Lino finally wriggled his body over the ledge.

As an overinvested parent watching from the sidelines, I felt horrible. He was panicked, embarrassed, hurt. But looking back on the weekend, I'm glad it happened.

We often delude ourselves into thinking natural gifts are a substitute for preparation. Like Lino, I've been guilty of thinking I can just "figure it out," instead of doing the necessary work.

Before we walk into hard challenges, we need confidence. But that confidence should be earned, not a result of ego.

Observation

My cousin and I drove 4½ hours to Montrose, Colorado, to fish the Gunnison River. We had debated whether to camp or stay in a hotel the first night. Since I was already dreading two nights without a mattress, I said I’d cover a motel the first night.

First, I found a Marriott property. Too expensive. Then a Holiday Inn. Too expensive. Then a Super 8 – I am not Jeff Bezos... Still too expensive. Then, like a shining beacon floating to the top of my Booking.com page, I saw it.

The Red Feather Inn.

We arrive at 11:30 p.m., tired from the long drive. Our room is in Section C, an isolated white block of a building that looks less like a motel and more like minimum-security housing. Dark. Rundown. Nearly vacant. As I park my Telluride, we notice three men sitting silently in a red Dodge Ram. They are just sitting there. They aren’t moving, aren’t unpacking. Nothing. They are just staring at the motel.

The parking lot feels dangerous. Dimly lit, beat-up cars, and an odd number of people just milling about. We pull into an open spot and grab our backpacks and, because we think it will be more secure, our expensive fly-fishing gear. Then we walk toward the entrance.

As we near the front doors, we walk past a woman who looks like an extra from The Walking Dead. Mid-40s, disheveled, worn down. She isn’t standing up straight and seems unsteady when she walks. She smiles as we pass, but seems unsettled. Why is she there?

The inside of the motel smells like bleach. The hallway carpets look like they’ve survived multiple floods. The walls are scuffed. The hallway is narrow, with flickering lights. Think The Shining, without all the charm. As we get to the room, number 224 C, it gets worse.

The lights don’t work, except in the bathroom. The television is dead. The outlets are loose and can’t hold a plug. My cousin tries to bolt the door, but the lock won’t hold. We see that the frame has been shattered and repaired so many times it looks like a middle-school woodworking project. Different screws. Different sizes. Different colors. The deadbolt cannot catch the frame.

Clearly, bad things have happened in that room. Repeatedly. Looking back out the window, we can still see the truck and the three men. And that woman walking around.

My cousin looks at me. “What if we’ve been marked?”

Psychology

One of the most powerful ideas in psychology is that we don’t respond to reality alone. Instead, we respond to the story our mind constructs about reality. Our experiences run through a filter of our emotions, our history, and our meaning-making systems. This is why two people can live through the exact same event and leave with entirely different experiences.

Objectively: We stayed in an old motel with poor maintenance.

Subjectively: I convinced myself those men and that woman were working together. My brain built the rest of the story. The men were waiting in the truck while the woman watched which rooms unsuspecting travelers were assigned. She was there to size us up, and they were there to take what they could. Once we fell asleep, the room was theirs.

That night, I slept lightly, with my knife out of its sheath on the nightstand.

In Practice

For better or worse, the stories you tell yourself shape your reality.

When you wonder about your circumstances, ask yourself two questions: 1) What do I know? 2) What story am I adding?

You don’t need to ignore your intuition. Intuition is subconscious pattern recognition. But before you draw conclusions, make sure you’re separating observations from interpretations.

It’s a crucial skill whether you’re evaluating a motel, your career, or your relationships.

The Brooke Baldwin and Megyn Kelly drama turns my stomach. To me, it is an extreme example of everything that is broken about our current media landscape.

Here’s the quick recap: Brooke Baldwin, the former CNN anchor, recently wrote a Substack post about dating after her divorce. In Baldwin’s own words, the post “was not about [her] having casual sex. It was about [her] choosing not to. It was about heartbreak. Discipline. Discernment. Protecting [her] energy.”

But Megyn Kelly and her team apparently never read the article. Instead, they read the headline: “CASUAL SEX. Let’s discuss.”

That was enough for Kelly to spend roughly nine minutes on her podcast criticizing Baldwin for her supposed promiscuity. She claimed Baldwin had slept with four men in a month and had abandoned her serious journalism career to sleep around.

Just one problem. None of it was true.

This Isn’t About Politics

I want to be careful here because it would be easy to turn this into a partisan story, and I don’t think that’s the interesting part. In fact, I wish these weren’t political commentators. If they weren’t, I suspect the backlash would be almost universal.

The interesting part is psychological.

Megyn Kelly has a proud and notable history of standing on principle. Remember her role in exposing serious misconduct at her former network. On behalf of women, she was willing to challenge people with extraordinary power. That history is what makes her commentary so shocking. How does someone go from being a journalist whose principles were beyond reproach to a podcaster willing to publicly slut-shame another woman for something she didn’t even do?

A more revealing event occurred after Kelly learned she had gotten the story wrong.

She returned to her podcast and offered this apology:

“Well, as it turns out, we should have paid to read the rest of her stupid Substack, which we didn’t, because who gives a shit about Brooke Baldwin, to be honest?”

She then acknowledged that Baldwin had not, in fact, had casual sex with the men she described before dismissing the article as little more than a gimmick to convince people to pay for Baldwin’s writing.

Rather than taking ownership, Kelly used the correction as another opportunity to insult Baldwin. She corrected the facts while preserving the contempt that produced the error in the first place. Sadly, this doesn’t appear to be an isolated incident. Kelly has developed a pattern of personally and aggressively attacking people she disagrees with.

• She has called Blake Lively a “narcissistic bully” and an “entitled, nasty Hollywood snob.”

• She mocked Chappell Roan’s Grammy Awards outfit as a “"very, very unattractive” before bringing up Roan’s bipolar diagnosis in the same discussion.

• She called Meghan Markle a “disaster artist.”

• She told Michelle Obama to stop making everything about herself and called her “thin-skinned.”

• And she claimed Brooke Baldwin’s “work and her mission include banging four men in a month.”

So why is Kelly doing this? I think the answer is fairly straightforward. She gets paid to. Manufacturing outrage, anger, and disgust is profitable. As an independent media personality, Kelly is rewarded for clicks, subscriptions, engagement, and attention.

Ironically, years ago Kelly criticized her former employer for compromising journalistic principles in pursuit of ratings and advertising dollars. Now she appears to be facing the same temptation.

And that’s the lesson I find most interesting.

If you build an incentive structure that operates outside your values, eventually your values begin to move.

Very few people wake up one morning and decide to abandon their principles. Instead, the compromises happen gradually. One story. One headline. One exaggeration. One rationalization at a time. Imagine going back twenty years and asking an early-career Megyn Kelly whether this is the kind of journalist she hoped to become.

Why We Defend People Even When They’re Wrong

The part of this story that fascinates me most isn’t actually Megyn Kelly. She’s one example of a broader problem. This dynamic exists across independent creators, legacy media organizations, political commentators, and social media influencers alike.

What fascinates me is the reaction of her audience.

When someone we admire behaves in a way that’s obviously irresponsible, it creates cognitive dissonance. We have two choices. Either we have to reassess the person, or we just explain away the behavior.

Most people choose the second option.

“It’s okay because Brooke is...” Fill in the insult.

Reassessing Kelly requires reassessing a piece of your own past judgment. That’s psychologically distressing. It’s easier to rationalize the mistake than to admit someone you trusted got it wrong.

I think this inability to recalibrate, recognize mistakes, and update our thinking is one of the defining psychological problems of our society. We don’t just defend public figures. We defend our own previous opinions about those public figures. And when no one is willing to update their beliefs, new information just becomes fuel for the original perspective.

That’s the recipe for a divided and contentious society.

I don’t know what’s more crazy-making: that Anthony Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times, or that Congress spent hours acting as though they expected something different.

Congress knew Fauci was never going to say anything that created legal or political exposure. And Fauci knew members of Congress would barrage him with moral outrage and rehearsed accusations. This wasn’t a serious effort to understand what happened during COVID-19, improve our pandemic response, or identify the lessons for the future.

This was about manufacturing content.

Clearly governing doesn’t pay as well as going viral.

The senators looked and sounded like they were auditioning for the next iteration of the Jersey Shore. Josh Hawley kicked it off with a well-rehearsed sound bite:

“You’ve done more to harm science than anybody in my lifetime, and I hope you’ll go home and write that in your diary.”

Bernie Moreno, was not about to be outdone, and pulled out a passionate F-Bomb:

“Who the f**k do you think you were for doing that? It is a total disgrace what you did to this country.”

And Fauci, for his part, wasn’t interested in going quietly. He accused Rand Paul of orchestrating the entire hearing to get him to say "something… anything" that would help Paul deliver on his promise of putting Fauci "behind bars." Noting that Paul had an “unhinged obsession.”

All sophomoric insults designed for social virality. The stuff of top-notch TikTok creators. The insults would get shared, liked, and replayed.

Mission accomplished.

Here’s the problem.

Our response to COVID absolutely deserves a serious post-mortem. Our government, influenced by public health officials and scientific advisors, made extraordinary, far-reaching decisions. We closed schools, brutalized small businesses, accelerated a mental health crisis, and drastically expanded government authority.

Right or wrong, our decisions warrant a look in the mirror.

What worked? What failed? Which policies saved lives? Which created unintended consequences? And, where did science guide good decisions, and where did politics distort the evidence?

Instead, our public servants chose performance art. Just like they did with Pam Bondi, the Benghazi hearings, and the presidents of Harvard, Penn, and MIT.

The incentives are obvious.

People on the right leave convinced that Fauci is a villain who corrupted science for personal gain. People on the left leave convinced that Republican senators are trying to destroy a public servant who worked desperately to save lives.

The rage machine keeps running. And the American public gets nothing.

We’ve built a political culture where clicks, and views are more appealing than progress.

I have been obsessed with Crash, the new documentary on Netflix. It’s the story of Mackenzie Shirilla, the reportedly sweet and ambitious teenager who drove her car 100 mph through quiet neighborhood streets before slamming into a brick wall, killing her boyfriend and his friend.

The legal questions have already been argued and answered. Mackenzie says it was an accident. The courts said otherwise.

Ironically, that was the least interesting part of the documentary to me.

I sat down expecting to watch a story about a horrific crime. Instead, I found myself fascinated by the people around her.

In particular, her parents.

Throughout the documentary, Natalie and Steven Shirilla seemed willing to defend their daughter regardless of the evidence. They reframed what appeared to be an abusive relationship. They entertained ways to mislead investigators. They questioned the safety of the car instead of focusing on the decision to drive it at 100 mph. And they showed remarkably little concern for the families of the two young men who died. Almost every conversation returned to Mackenzie’s future, Mackenzie’s suffering, and Mackenzie’s loss.

Watching them, I kept thinking about something psychologists see every day.

Human beings don’t simply interpret reality. We interpret reality in ways that protect the stories we tell ourselves.

The world is messy. It’s full of uncertainty, contradiction, and ambiguity. Most of us don’t like that. So we organize it into a coherent narrative that explains who we are.

Am I a good person? Am I competent? Am I lovable? Am I a good parent?

These are the questions we spend our lives trying to answer. And once we arrive at an answer we like, we begin protecting it.

I don’t think Mackenzie’s parents were only defending their daughter.

I think they were defending a story.

We’re good parents. We raised a good daughter.

Once that story became part of their identity, contradictory evidence became almost impossible to absorb. Every fact that supported the narrative got magnified. Every fact that threatened it got explained away.

Most of us imagine we approach life like scientists. We gather evidence, test hypotheses, and revise our beliefs when new information emerges.

In reality, we’re often much closer to novelists.

Scientists let the evidence shape the theory. Novelists start with the story and make the facts fit.

The Shirilla family isn’t unique. Their story is just more visible than ours.

Think about the typical parent for a moment.

Why are parents so quick to tell you about their child’s grades, athletic accomplishments, or college acceptance? Part of it is happiness for the child. But a much bigger part is identity.

My child succeeded. Therefore, I must have done something right.

Likewise, when a child struggles, parents often look for explanations outside themselves. The teacher was unfair. The coach played favorites. The other kids were jealous. Sometimes those explanations are true. But more often, they’re simply protecting a story.

We all do this.

A manager convinces himself everyone who quits is lazy or can’t keep up. An executive blames “the market” for every missed quarter. A spouse insists every argument is caused by their partner’s flaws.

No one experiences reality directly. We experience it through the lens of who we believe we are. That’s why changing someone’s mind is so difficult. You’re rarely arguing with the facts. You’re arguing with their identity.

The truth is that we all have stories we’re protecting. Stories about our competence. Our relationships. Our politics. Our parenting. Our careers.

The question isn’t whether you’re telling yourself a story. The question is whether you’re willing to notice when the story has stopped serving the truth.

Life can feel inherently futile. So can work.
There's a 2,000-year-old story about this.

In the myth of Sisyphus, the Greek king is condemned by the gods to push a boulder up a mountain for eternity. Every time he reaches the top, it rolls back down. He walks back down. Pushes it up again. Forever.

In life, Sisyphus had been audacious, cunning, and overly ambitious. His punishment in death fit the crime: unending, futile striving.

It's a myth about the futility of life and the absurdity of human ambition. A metaphor for existence itself. Work hard, suffer, repeat. We live, work, and die without any clear purpose.

But, what if there's an alternative, and better, interpretation?

Albert Camus read the story differently.

"One must imagine Sisyphus happy."

Not resigned. Not broken. But fully aware, and still choosing to push the boulder up the mountain. Not because the task became easier. But because owning it consciously, rather than enduring it passively, is the difference between a condemned man and a free one.

As a business psychologist and consultant, I sit with a lot of burned-out executives.

And almost without exception, the exhaustion doesn't come from effort.
We can tolerate, and even enjoy, demanding work if it feels meaningful. If we find purpose in it.

Most of us don't truly choose our jobs. We drift into them. We inherit them. We select them for money or external validation. And then we are uninspired by them.

Sartre called this "bad faith." We tell ourselves we want the job. That we find value in it. But in truth, it doesn't reflect our authentic choices.

If you're burned out, the question isn't just "How do I do less?"

The real question is: can I find value and purpose in my work?

Same boulder. You either endure it or claim it.

One is condemned.
The other is free.

The Supreme Court of the United States just redefined therapy as “just talking.”

And honestly, I am simultaneously offended by the misinterpretation of the field of psychology and outraged by the clear damage the decision will cause.

What Actually Happened

On March 31, 2026, the Court handed down a decision that will likely invalidate conversion therapy bans across roughly half the country.

A Christian counselor in Colorado, Kaley Chiles, sued the state over a 2019 law prohibiting licensed therapists from practicing conversion therapy on minors.

She didn’t argue that conversion therapy works or that conversion therapy is effective.

Her argument was smarter, more strategic.

She argued the law was not “neutral” about which direction therapy could go.

A therapist could:

• Affirm a client’s sexual orientation

• Support gender transition (through identity exploration)

But could not:

• Help a client reduce same-sex attraction

• Help a client align with their biological sex

Same room.

Same license.

Same use of words.

Different rules depending on the conclusion.

She called that viewpoint discrimination.

The Court agreed. 8 to 1.

The original statute banned “any practice… that attempts or purports to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity.” But simultaneously permitted treatment that supports “coping, social support, and identity exploration.”

Even critics of conversion therapy acknowledged that the Colorado law was not written in a viewpoint-neutral way.

Justice Kagan essentially said that if the law were written differently, the outcome might have changed.

It is also important to note that the law bundles together two very different things:

• Sexual orientation

• Gender identity

Those are not the same.

Public perception of these issues is not symmetrical.

Relatively few people, left or right, think being gay is a psychological problem. There is near-universal agreement that attempts to change sexual orientation through therapy are harmful and should not exist.

Gender identity is different.

For a meaningful portion of the population, it is still seen as:

• a psychological issue

• something to be questioned

• something that warrants a different clinical approach

When these two categories get shoved together, the discussion stops feeling like: “Should we allow a harmful practice?” And starts feeling like: “Should the government restrict conversations about identity?”

That is a very different question. And one far more likely to generate disagreement, even among people on the same side of the political aisle.

So here are the two facts that made this case possible: the language of the law was not neutral, and the law addressed two distinct clinical issues that carry very different levels of public consensus.

Now, the question you should be asking is: why does language neutrality matter?

It only matters under two conditions. Either the treatments produce equal outcomes. Or therapy isn’t really treatment at all.

Do Both Treatments Produce Equal Outcomes?

Psychology is a soft science.

We should admit that.

Own it.

We argue.

We revise.

And we get influenced by culture more than we like to admit.

But when people hear “soft science” they often assume “no science.”

And that is wrong.

There are many areas where the empirical signal is very clear:

• Treatments for depression work (CBT, behavioral activation)

• Exposure therapy works for anxiety

• Crisis intervention saves lives

• Learning theory is not up for debate

And then there are things we know do not work.

At the top of that list: conversion therapy.

It does not work. It causes harm.

Not maybe.

Not sometimes.

Consistently.

The research shows:

• More depression

• More anxiety

• More self-harm and suicidal thinking

• More shame

• No long-term change in sexual orientation

I do not care what your politics are. I do not care what your religion is. This is not a values debate.

This intervention fails. Full stop.

The answer to “are the interventions equal in outcome” is a clear no.

What If It Isn’t Treatment at All?

Instead of engaging any of that, the Court made a different move.

They changed the category.

They did not define therapy as treatment.

Instead, they defined it as speech.

Now it is not about whether something works.

It is about whether the government can regulate words.

Which sounds principled.

Until you actually think it through.

If therapy is just speech:

• Can a therapist encourage self-harm and call it exploration?

• Do duty-to-warn laws disappear because it is just conversation?

• Does licensure matter, or is anyone with opinions now a therapist?

• Can therapists pursue relationships with patients because it is just talking?

We regulate therapists for one reason: because what they do changes outcomes.

Therapy is a structured intervention designed to reduce harm and improve wellbeing.

Calling it “just speech” is like calling surgery “just cutting.”

Technically true. Functionally absurd.

What This Decision Actually Does

This was not about new evidence.

The Court did not challenge the data.

They did not engage the clinical reality.

They reframed the activity.

And now, conversion therapy is back on the table.

This decision will hurt kids.

It will:

• Increase depression

• Increase shame

• Increase risk

We know this.

And pretending we don’t is denial.

Final Thought

I understand that the law was written in a messy way. It wasn’t neutral, and it did combine sexual orientation with gender identity in ways that complicated the legal argument.

But using that flaw as a reason to redefine therapy, from a medical treatment to simply speech, is stupid on stilts.

I cannot think of a more precise way to put it.

There are real debates worth having in the field of psychology.

This isn’t one of them.

This decision doesn’t advance or improve the field.

It sidelines it.

One of the most powerful psychological forces in human behavior is permission.

When people return to harmful habits, they rarely do it in open rebellion. Instead, the mind quietly searches for a justification that makes the behavior feel reasonable.

And few justifications are more powerful than grief.

There is a strange rule in modern culture. Once someone is grieving, we are supposed to stop telling the truth.

We are expected to be kind, supportive, and compassionate. And we absolutely should be. Grief is one of the heaviest things a person can carry.

But somewhere along the way, compassion quietly turned into something else.

Silence.

Recently, Kelly Osbourne has appeared exceptionally thin in public outings. The internet noticed. And, as the internet tends to do, the commentary has been brutal.

In response, Osbourne has essentially said, Yes, I’m not healthy right now. My father just died. Back off.

Her argument is understandable. The criticism, she says, is cruel. People are objectifying a grieving daughter and attacking someone who is already hurting.

Many people responded exactly as you might expect. They felt shame for the commentary. They felt empathy for Kelly. They defended her.

Those reactions are human and appropriate.

But moments like this also reveal something psychologically important.

The Psychology of Permission

If you spend enough time around addiction or any self-destructive coping pattern, you start to notice something.

Relapse rarely begins with rebellion. It begins with permission.

I have seen this dynamic many times in clinical work.

A client’s dog dies and suddenly the drinking starts again.

A divorce finalizes and they return to drugs.

They lose a job and old destructive habits quietly reappear.

Self-destructive coping systems rarely wait for permission.

They manufacture it.

The brain is constantly scanning the environment for reasons that make returning to a harmful behavior feel justified.

Stress works. Celebration works.

But grief?

Grief is the golden ticket.

Who can argue with grief? What monster would deny someone comfort in their darkest hour?

Grief carries social immunity.

And the brain knows it.

Pain Is Real. So Is Rationalization.

None of this means the grief is not real.

Losing a parent is devastating. Anyone who has gone through it knows the emotional ground disappears beneath your feet. Your identity shifts. Your routines change. Your nervous system struggles to recalibrate.

Grief destabilizes people.

And when people are destabilized, they reach for coping mechanisms. Some are healthy. Some are not.

But here is the psychological pattern we often miss.

Pain and rationalization can coexist.

A person can be genuinely grieving and using that grief, consciously or unconsciously, to justify behaviors that harm them.

Those two realities are not mutually exclusive.

If We Change the Behavior, the Pattern Becomes Obvious

Imagine hearing the same defense in a different context.

“My dad just died. Of course I’m drinking.”

“How dare you judge me while I’m grieving.”

“I’m hurting, and this is how I cope.”

Anyone who has lived with addiction or any compulsive coping pattern has heard some version of this script.

Family members hear it.
Friends hear it.
Therapists hear it.

It is not malicious. It is common.

Concern Is Not Always Cruelty

Not everyone in those comment sections is a troll.

Some are simply recognizing a pattern.

They see what destructive coping can look like when it wears the mask of mourning.

But concern often gets reframed as cruelty.

Accountability becomes judgment.
Observation becomes objectification.
And suddenly the only socially acceptable response is silence.

But silence is not always compassion.

Sometimes it is avoidance.

What Love Actually Looks Like

When someone loses a parent, we should absolutely surround them with care.

But real care does not require pretending that destructive behavior is healthy.

Real care sometimes says the uncomfortable thing.

And here is the truth that often gets lost in moments like this.

Her father would want her to live.

He would want her healthy.
He would want her thriving.
He would want her honoring his memory by choosing life.

Using grief as justification for slowly destroying yourself is not healing.

It is grief being recruited into the service of self-destruction.

The Real Problem

The internet believes the villain here is cruelty.

The commenters. The critics. The people pointing out what they see.

But those may not be the real problem.

The real problem may be something much quieter.

Not judgment.
Not patriarchy.
Not online trolls.

Self-destructive coping patterns.

Those patterns are far more dangerous than a harsh comment section. Because they do not need cruelty to survive.

They only need silence.

And they thrive whenever pain becomes permission.

The harder question may be this. When someone we care about is hurting themselves, what does compassion actually require from us?

Because they do not care whether we are being compassionate.

They only care whether we are being honest.

Over the last several weeks, I’ve found myself increasingly frustrated by the government’s handling of the Epstein files. And, transparently, I lost my mind watching Pam Bondi’s latest performance before congress.

We’ve now seen multiple document releases from the Department of Justice, each framed as a step toward transparency. Yet taken together, these releases have had the complete opposite effect.

The information is fragmented. Some names appear without context, while others are hidden without clear reason. The material is technically public but practically unimpactful. What should clarify instead confuses.

When confusion is persistent and patterned, it stops being accidental.

What we are observing is institutional gaslighting.

People often confuse gaslighting with lying. They aren’t the same. Lying contradicts reality. Gaslighting erodes it. It works by persuading someone to distrust their own perception, even when the evidence is right in front of them.

The term gaslighting comes from the 1938 play Gas Light, later adapted into a popular film. In the story, a husband deliberately manipulates his wife into doubting her own sanity. He dims the gas lights in their home, hides objects, and then insists that she is forgetful, unstable, or imagining things. Each incident on its own seems minor, but taken together they lead her to question whether something is wrong with her. The manipulation is strategic. His goal is to destabilize her confidence so that she stops trusting her own perception of reality. By leveraging her eroded sense of confidence, he attempts to conceal a murder and gain access to his wife’s inheritance.

Gaslighting works because of power. The person doing it holds authority and credibility. Over time, the target begins deferring to the narrative of the person in control.

The Epstein story broke years ago. From the beginning, it was clear that individuals with significant social and political power had been connected to him. The public response was intense and, for once, largely bipartisan. People wanted accountability for some of the most serious crimes imaginable.

And then… very little happened.

Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide under circumstances that raised legitimate questions. Those questions were never fully resolved. When people continued to ask them, the focus shifted. The facts were described as incomplete. The public was warned against speculation. Skepticism was reframed as the irrationality of conspiracy theorists.

Later, Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted. Many assumed further disclosures would follow. Names, networks, accountability. But there was nothing.

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump publicly suggested that additional transparency around the Jeffrey Epstein files was possible. Once in office, however, the message shifted. Administration figures, including FBI Director Kash Patel, downplayed expectations, said no comprehensive list existed, and framed continued public focus on the issue as overblown or misguided.

Notice the pattern.

The substance of the concern remained unresolved. Instead, the concern itself became the problem.

“Why are you so focused on this?”
“Why can’t you move on?”
“Why aren’t you paying attention to more important issues?”

That same rhetorical move surfaced again during recent congressional questioning of Pam Bondi. When pressed about Epstein-related accountability, she repeatedly avoided answering the question directly. Instead, she challenged the judgment of those asking it, implying that their priorities were misplaced given broader national concerns.

The observable reality is straightforward. Serious crimes occurred. Epstein did not operate in isolation. And aside from Ghislaine Maxwell, no powerful figures have faced legal consequences. Those facts have not changed, no matter how often attention is redirected.

Institutional gaslighting operates in plain sight, using authority and repetition to suggest that continued scrutiny reflects obsession, bias, or an inability to move on.

The danger is not that institutions lie. The danger is that people are trained to doubt their own judgment before they question power.

That is where responsibility shifts back to us, the individuals.

A healthy society requires some level of skepticism. It requires citizens who can tolerate ambiguity without surrendering curiosity, who understand that “trust the process” is not a substitute for explanation.

Questioning authority is not cynicism. It is civic hygiene.

Gaslighting only works when people submit to authority and abandon their own perception. The antidote is not outrage or withdrawal. The antidote is attention.

I am dreading January 1st. I know what’s coming. I’ll walk into my gym and it’ll be a freaking circus, chock-full of people who haven’t seen the inside of a gym since last January, all sporting pristine Lululemon gear and brand-new shaker bottles filled with some radioactive pre-workout concoction. They’ll line up three deep for the bench and squat rack, creating a pressure cooker where everyone’s rushing through their sets. Meanwhile, others will camp out on machines, wasting everyone’s time while they figure out how to set up their new fitness apps.

The worst part…I am one of them.

Those new gymgoers and I are all believers in the great American religion of the New Year’s Resolution, a faith with an 80% apostasy rate before February rolls around. We’re all the same species of delusional optimists.

The Ritual of Failure

Every year, most of us set resolutions. And every year, almost all of us fail to keep them. Research shows that only 20% of us are still on board in February. A meager 8% make it through the whole year.

And here’s what should really blow your mind: resolutions made at other times of the year have a 20-30% success rate. That means your New Year’s resolution is literally the worst time to try to change your life.

So the question is: why are New Year’s resolutions so ineffective? Why don’t they work?

The Calendar is Not Your Therapist

Real behavior change follows a process. You’re living your life, blissfully unaware you’re doing something wrong or unhealthy. Then you notice. Then you admit it’s a problem. Then you decide you can’t live like this anymore. Then, and this is crucial, you prepare. You think it through. You build systems. You change your environment. You invest real psychological energy. Only then do you act. And eventually, if you do it right, the new behavior becomes part of your identity.

That’s a lot of work. It requires a lot of preparation and a lot of investment. You have to be experiencing enough distress to actually adjust your behavior.

Now compare that to the typical New Year’s resolution process: “Oh look, the Earth completed another lap around the sun. I guess I should improve myself. This year I’ll eat healthy and go to the gym.” Zero preparation. Zero real discipline. Zero psychological readiness. Just a date on a calendar that we’ve been culturally conditioned to treat as magical.

If you were actually ready to change, you wouldn’t wait for January 1st. If you were genuinely distressed about your health, you’d start in November. The fact that you’re waiting for an arbitrary calendar date is a signal flare that you don’t really want to change, you just feel like you’re supposed to.

How Do We Actually Find Success?

So, trying to remove the nihilistic perspective for a moment, are there things we can do when setting goals to make them more likely to stick? Are there ways to do this that can actually work? The answer is “Yes.”

Below are some tips, grounded in what the research actually tells us about behavior change.

First, get specific and get small. Don’t say “I’m going to lose a lot of weight in 2026.” Say “I’m going to eat 2000 calories a day and walk 20 minutes, three times a week.” The former is a fantasy. The latter is a behavior you can execute tomorrow.

Second, frame your goals as approach, not avoidance. Don’t say “I’m going to stop eating sugar.” Say “I’m going to eat 100 grams of protein every day.” Moving toward something is psychologically stickier than running away from something. We’re wired to pursue, not to flee indefinitely.

Third, track everything. And I mean actually track it with data, with apps, with hard numbers. Don’t lie to yourself that your busy day at the office “probably equaled 20 minutes of walking.” That’s your brain negotiating with your goals. Measure it or it doesn’t count.

Fourth, build in accountability. There’s research out of Dominican University of California showing that people who report their progress to an accountability partner are 33% more likely to achieve their goals. If you want change to stick, tell someone. Report to someone. Make it social.

Finally, align your goals with your identity. This is a big one. If you want to lose weight, you can’t just change your behavior, you have to change how you see yourself. You need to become someone who values health.

Instead of telling yourself “I’m trying to eat better,” reframe it as “I’m someone who fuels my body well.” Instead of “I want to work out more,” think “I’m someone who prioritizes fitness.” This is why people set themes for the year, “This is the year of health,” rather than just isolated behavioral changes. When your actions align with your identity, friction disappears.

My Goal

So, in light of all this, here’s my goal for 2026. This is going to be the year of “Health” for me. To that end I will do the following:

1. I will run 20 miles per week.

2. I will get my daily macros in order (140 grams of protein, 73 grams of fat, 318 grams of carbohydrates). Yes, my new app gave me those numbers.

3. I will lift weights 3x/week.

And I’ll post my progress publicly at the end of the year, because accountability matters.

Either I’ll be strutting around as part of the winning 8%, or you’ll see me next January squinting at my phone in the corner of the gym, trying to remember my BodySpace password.

It’s the bodies.

Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Michelle Yeoh are talented performers, seasoned professionals, and, suddenly, much thinner than they’ve ever been. The change is not minor. It’s not speculative. It’s visible. And yet the cultural response is a collective shrug, as though we’ve all agreed that noticing the obvious is somehow worse than what’s obvious itself.

This is the post-body-positivity era.

Thin is back.

Silence is mandatory.

We’ve seen this cycle before. In the 1990s, thinness was explicit, even brutal. “Heroin chic” didn’t pretend to be healthy. In the 2000s, thinness was repackaged with curves and sexual confidence. Then came the 2010s correction.. a cultural shift toward acceptance, diversity, and an explicit rejection of shame.

And then came GLP-1 drugs.

Overnight, the moral scaffolding collapsed. Body positivity didn’t evolve; it vanished. What replaced it wasn’t honesty or nuance, but a strange new etiquette: you may become thin again, but you must pretend it happened organically, privately, effortlessly. Ask no questions. Raise no eyebrows.

Applaud quietly.

The Wicked set appears to be a perfect microcosm of this shift. Film productions are closed systems. Hierarchical. Hyper-aesthetic. Approval flows downward. What is rewarded is copied. What is copied becomes normal.

This is how social contagion works. One person changes. The change is rewarded. Others follow. No instructions are issued. The environment does the work.

Watching Grande and Erivo together in interviews further points to dysfunction. Their emotional synchrony. The mirroring, the excessive reassurance, the fused language. This all suggests not more than closeness, but enmeshment and dyadic reinforcement. There appears to be a closed loop where behavior is validated regardless of whether the behavior is healthy or unhealthy.

This matters because it doesn’t stop on the red carpet.

It impacts the audience.

They see the aesthetic, but miss the stress, the deprivation, and psychological cost that may be happening behind the scenes. They see the outcome. And outcomes, healthy or not, become aspirational. Especially for young people already marinating in comparison culture.

Thin is back. We just aren’t supposed to say so.

I went back and forth on whether to write this.

Not because it’s complicated.
But because it’s ugly.

President Trump’s post on X following the killing of Rob and Michelle Reiner wasn’t just inappropriate, it was incomprehensible. There is no version of leadership, decency, or adulthood in which mocking a dead critic makes sense. None.

So, this isn’t about taste. Or tone. Or “Trump being Trump.”

The question worth asking is simpler and more uncomfortable:

Why would a president believe this was the right response?

There are two plausible psychological explanations. Neither is flattering. Both are dangerous.

Explanation One: He Can’t See Other People

Some people, particularly those with strong narcissistic characteristics, have a severely impaired ability to take perspective. They don’t meaningfully experience empathy. They process the world almost entirely through one question:

How does this affect me?

Compassion requires the ability to momentarily exit your own mind and imagine someone else’s interior world. Shame, grief, and vulnerability require emotional bandwidth and tolerance.

This isn’t a lack of intelligence. It’s a lack of moral salience.

When criticized, people with these traits don’t reflect. They retaliate, often with contempt.

From this lens, Trump’s post isn’t calculated. It’s reflexive. Reiner criticized Trump. Reiner is now dead. Therefore, Reiner is irrelevant. Perhaps he’s even deserving.

Explanation Two: Cruelty as a Feature, Not a Bug

The second explanation is colder, and more functional.

Mocking the dead sends a clear signal: I am untouched by this.No grief. No restraint. No weakness.

That’s dominance.

Leaders who trade in power rather than trust understand that humans often confuse emotional numbness with strength. We find comfort in hierarchy. We appreciate decisiveness. We admire leaders who appear immune to shame.

In this model, mockery isn’t a slip, it’s a display.

It disciplines opponents.
It reassures followers.
It reinforces the pecking order.

This is how cult leaders behave, not because they’re irrational, but because it works. Cruelty keeps people “inside the tent.” It warns them what happens if they step out.

Mechanism vs. Function (It Barely Matters)

We can debate which explanation is “true”: impaired empathy or strategic dominance.

The distinction matters intellectually. It matters clinically. But it does not matter functionally.

Psychologists separate mechanism from function for a reason. One explains what’s happening inside a person. The other explains what their behavior does to the environment.

And the function here is obvious.

This behavior:

• Distresses opponents

• Electrifies loyalists

• Forces wavering supporters into cognitive gymnastics

• Normalizes contempt as leadership

That last point matters most.

Trump is normalizing contempt as an acceptable component of leadership. This is not the first time he has reacted with cruelty to the suffering of others, and it is unlikely to be the last.

It’s easy to focus on Trump here. That’s the comfortable move.

Harder is admitting why this keeps happening.

Because every time this behavior is excused, minimized, or rationalized, it sends a signal: this is acceptable if it’s coming from our side.

Leaders don’t just reveal who they are. They reveal who their audiences are willing to become.

That’s the part we don’t like to sit with.

I’ve been on YouTube for about five years now, and I’ve gone sideways in the comments more times than I’d like to admit. There’s nothing like waking up to strangers calling you an incompetent grifter before you’ve even had coffee.

Early on, I would go nuclear. “You want to come for me? I’ll burn your house down.” Unfortunately, that approach never worked. In all my time on the YouTube platform, I’ve never had a commenter respond with, “Wow, David, you are so wise. I am sorry for ever questioning your authority.”

Instead, they’d go nuclear right back at me…and bring reinforcements.

Then, one time I posted an apology video. I didn’t start weeping on camera, but I did talk about being unfairly attacked for what I believed was a reasonable position. And the reaction stunned me. The video blew up. Strangers flooded in to defend me. My subscriber count spiked. The attackers vanished.

That’s when I realized something ugly: victimhood pays.

And I’m far from the only one who’s noticed.

Psychologists have a name for what I stumbled into: Virtuous Victimhood Signaling. A 2021 study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Ok et al.) found that when people combine “I was harmed” with “and I’m still a good person,” the rest of us instinctively rush to protect them. We see them as warmer, more moral, and less appropriate to criticize.

On the surface, that feels right. Of course we should protect the wounded.

But here’s my concern: today, being wounded may be the fastest way to gain status. Faster than being smart, insightful, disciplined, or kind.

Just look how quickly the cultural tide shifts when someone steps into the victim role.

Justin Baldoni’s visibility exploded the moment he framed himself as Blake Lively’s victim. Chappell Roan shifted from quirky indie darling to VMA dominance after describing the music industry as “predatory.” Britney Spears rode the #FreeBritney wave from cultural cautionary tale to cultural saint. Johnny Depp? He was radioactive in Hollywood until he repositioned himself as Amber Heard’s victim. Then suddenly Dior came calling and the resurrection began.

This isn’t to say their pain wasn’t real. It’s to say that our reaction to it follows a predictable script. And that script rewards victimhood handsomely.

So it’s fair to ask:

Have we over-indexed on the benefits of signaling victimhood? And if so, is that distorting how people see themselves and the world?

Researchers think it might be. Psychologists have begun studying something called emotional entitlement. This is the belief that the world owes you comfort and accommodation for your feelings. And people who score high on emotional entitlement are far more likely to see themselves as perpetual victims (Bianchi, 2022).

This raises a classic ‘chicken or egg’ question:

Does signaling victimhood increase expectations of deference? Or do people who already expect deference instinctively adopt the language of victimhood? It might also be that a hidden third factor drives both.

But let’s set that aside and ask the bigger question:

Why does this matter? What’s the actual cost of turning victimhood into cultural currency?

I think the costs are significant. Four come to mind.

1) Identity

When a culture rewards victimhood, people start folding their pain into their sense of self. Our self-esteem is shaped by how well we match the norms around us, and over time, that feedback shapes how we see ourselves.

If victimhood is treated as a virtue, it becomes something to internalize. Pain shifts from something we experience to something we are, and that runs directly against identities built on grit, responsibility, or resilience.

2) Depth

When articulating pain becomes more important than learning from it, people lean into the performance instead of the process. If expressing suffering earns attention, sympathy, or moral authority, the incentive to actually resolve it weakens.

Pain stops being a signal to heal and becomes a strategy for moving through the world.

3) Reality Testing

I worry that the ‘virtuous victimhood’ signal warps how people gauge both their pain and their own harmful behavior. If every expression of hurt gets automatic validation, no one can say, “I think you might be overreacting.” And the people who unintentionally cause harm never get clear feedback about what actually crosses the line.

Without a shared sense of proportion, real harm and everyday friction starts looking the same. And when everything feels like a crisis, rational conflict resolution becomes nearly impossible.

4) True Victims Lose

There’s an even more troubling risk: real victims get overlooked when everyone is crying wolf. When claims of harm become constant, the signal gets lost in the noise. People stop knowing what to take seriously.

The individuals who are genuinely mistreated, the ones who truly need support and intervention, end up competing with a chorus of amplified grievances.

This isn’t about people faking pain. It’s about an environment that amplifies it.

Ironically, a culture full of victim signaling makes it harder, not easier, for actual victims to be heard.

None of this is an argument for becoming less sensitive or less compassionate. It’s an argument for becoming more discerning. Pain deserves to be taken seriously, but also accurately.

When we elevate victimhood above insight, we confuse suffering with wisdom and make it harder for people to grow, heal, and relate honestly to one another.

The goal isn’t to silence pain.

The goal should be to make sure pain leads somewhere. Toward resilience, maturity, and genuine connection.

The holidays are supposed to be the season of giving. But in my family, it’s mostly the season of giving… opinions. Every conversation starts with goodwill and ends with someone dramatically storming off. We love each other, but it sure doesn’t seem like we do when we are in the same room.

As I head into another round of family gatherings, I can already feel the dread creeping in. My family is full of people I genuinely love. They are smart, funny, and generous people. But over the last ten years, we’ve proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we are incapable of having thoughtful conversations about what’s happening in the world. We don’t debate. We detonate. We are snippy, moralistic, pugnacious, and bombastic.

No matter how much we love and appreciate each other, we can’t seem to separate who someone is from what they believe. And that, I think, is the root of the problem. Not just for my family, but for our culture at large.

We’ve confused beliefs with values, and in doing so, we’ve lost the ability to see each other clearly.

Beliefs are just ideas about how the world works. They’re shaped by experience, upbringing, and environment. Beliefs are transient, reactive, and contextual. They evolve with new information, new experiences, and new fears.

Values, on the other hand, are the steady undercurrent. The internal compass that orients us toward what matters. They’re not about what we think, but why. They show up in how we treat people, how we handle conflict, and how we live when no one’s looking.

Beliefs are weather. Values are climate.

But we live in a time when beliefs have become shorthand for morality. People assume that what you believe is who you are. It’s not just objectively wrong; it’s intellectually lazy and emotionally corrosive. It turns every disagreement into a moral test.

Two people can hold opposing beliefs and still share the same underlying value.

Take immigration. One person might detest Trump’s immigration policy because they value compassion. They feel a moral obligation to care for people in need. Another might support that same policy because they value security. They believe a functioning country requires clear boundaries and order. Both are motivated by care. They just express it differently.

But we rarely stop to see that. We hear the belief and make the leap to judgment. Once we’ve labeled someone, naïve realism takes over and curiosity shuts down. We flatten people into tribes and start assessing their intellect and moral standing.

Psychology backs this up. Social psychologist Shalom Schwartz spent decades studying human values across cultures and found that people everywhere share the same core values: benevolence, security, freedom, justice, and tradition. The order might change. The expression might vary. But the values themselves are remarkably consistent.

If that’s true across cultures, it’s certainly true across the holiday dinner table. So this year, I am going to stop worrying about who my sister-in-law voted for. Instead, I’ll start learning about what she values.

I have a 10 year old.

We are at that magical stage where he is getting ready to transition from elementary school to middle school.

My weeknights? I spend them touring every middle school within a 20-mile radius. To my surprise, choosing a school in 2025 is a very big deal. My wife and I are assessing our “options” as if my son is a young genius and not a kid that cannot remember to flush. And we are not the only ones. There are hundreds of families walking the halls of middle schools asking about “Gifted and Talented” programs and college-level math. Meanwhile, their 10-year-olds are trailing behind, singing the Soda Pop song and doing the Griddy.

Last week, we visited a private school that advertised a program called “academic skills and support.” The website explains:

“Skills such as executive functioning, time management, and self advocacy are areas of focus in every grade, with academic support specialists offering both regular instruction for all students and targeted intervention. Individual learning plans and academic accommodations are available with appropriate diagnosis.”

And this was not the only school offering this type of program. All the private schools appear to offer a similar range of options. They promote executive functioning coaching, learning specialists, and advisory programs. These are packaged as support systems, but they look very much like structures designed to maximize the academic performance of affluent students.

It does not feel like a system intended for children who truly need it.

To me, it feels like an opportunity, something you could opt into if it gave your child an advantage.

In the last decade, ADHD has become the heavyweight champion of childhood diagnoses. Rates climbed from roughly six percent of children in the late nineties to more than ten percent by 2015 (Xu et al., 2018). Recent CDC reporting puts the “ever diagnosed” rate above eleven percent for school-aged children, which suggests the trend is not slowing down (Reuben, 2024). Medication use has followed the same path, with more than sixty percent of diagnosed kids taking stimulants to manage symptoms (Getahun et al., 2021). The rise is real, measurable, and significant.

There are reasonable explanations for part of this trend. Diagnostic criteria expanded. Cultural attitudes toward mental health became more open. Awareness increased. But I believe there is more happening beneath the surface.

My theory is this: academic pressure, hyper competitiveness, projective identification (parents projecting their identities onto their children), and narcissistic extension (when the child becomes part of the parent’s ego, self-esteem, and social status) push parents to place an extraordinary premium on their children’s immediate success.

For parents with resources, the response is simple. They build a world where success is engineered. The old helicopter parent, hovering, anxious, and overly involved, is now insufficient. They have been replaced by the lawnmower parent, who moves forward at full speed, smoothing the terrain and clearing away every obstacle before the child ever encounters it.

In high-pressure academic environments, an ADHD diagnosis can unlock extended time on tests, reduced homework load, and access to specialized tutoring. No one wants to say it outright, but ADHD medication and academic accommodations can function like performance-enhancing tools. They can serve as quiet boosters that help generate the high grades parents proudly display. The resulting impressive academic performance can then be used in the way select soccer functions in some families. It becomes a marker of status that can be whispered about between sips of six-dollar lattes and CorePower yoga classes.

Now… that is my theory. It is not fact. In reality, the data is complex. We can measure access, diagnosis rates, and prescription patterns. What we do not measure is motivation.

It is true that kids from higher-income households are more likely to receive treatment for ADHD than kids from lower-income households (Cummings et al., 2020). It is also true that children in lower-income environments often have higher ADHD risk and yet receive less treatment (Reuben, 2024; Children and Adults with ADHD, 2022). But the disparity may have nothing to do with upper-class families chasing academic performance and everything to do with barriers such as cost, time, transportation, stigma, and access to providers. It is entirely possible that the treatment gap is the result of limited access, not strategic ambition.

Let me close with two questions.

First, are we starting to see diagnosis become a luxury item? Something only a small segment of families can deploy as a strategic advantage? We say ADHD support is meant to level the playing field, but in practice, it may be doing the opposite. It may be turning diagnosis into a resource, a form of academic leverage available only to those who can access it.

Second, is it even an advantage at all? Or are we creating a generation of children who never learn to manage their ADHD symptoms on their own? Children medicated for short-term academic performance who then struggle to self-soothe, maintain focus, or regulate emotion. Children who feel stigmatized and limited. Children who believe they cannot function without a medical crutch. Children who never get the chance to develop the personal agency that comes from learning to manage symptoms through effort and practice, rather than outsourcing that work to a prescription.

Erika Kirk. A young widow with two kids and a murdered husband introduces J.D. Vance at a Turning Point event. She gives him a hug, and the internet loses its collective mind.

Within hours, “body-language experts” are breaking it down frame by frame like it’s the Zapruder film. “See how long her hand lingers?” “Notice how he leans in?” “Her hands are in his hair!” “This shows deep sexual chemistry.”

This is where we are as a culture: two people hug and the mob goes full CSI.

We’ve become so tied to our political tribes that we’ve stopped seeing people as people. We see caricatures: heroes or villains, angels or devils. We forget they are real people, with real lives and real emotions. They aren’t human to us anymore; they’re props in our own political theater.

A grieving woman hugs a colleague and friend. And instead of thinking, Wow, that’s sad and human, we think, She’s having an affair.

And the “experts” who fuel it? They’re not experts. They’re influencers with ring lights and zero peer-reviewed anything. They’re selling pseudo-science to people who think every arm placement is a Freudian slip. They never hedge, never acknowledge the softness of their so-called science.

So, to ground this conversation in something sturdier than social media confidence, let’s look at what the empirical literature actually says.

What the research shows

Grief destroys your sense of connection, disrupting the attachment system that keeps us anchored to others (Shaver & Mikulincer, 2008). It makes you crave human warmth—not sex, not romance, just contact. When someone you love dies, the body and mind continue to search for the safety that person once provided. Research shows that affectionate touch...hugging, holding, simply being near… helps regulate distress and preserve a sense of closeness (Jakubiak & Feeney, 2017; Jakubiak, Feeney, & Brumbaugh, 2020). You don’t crave passion; you crave proof that you still belong somewhere.

Data also show that a hug can be intimate without being sexual. Researchers consistently distinguish affectionate touch, such as hugging, holding hands, or resting a hand on someone’s shoulder, from sexual touch, which carries erotic intent (Jakubiak & Feeney, 2017). Affectionate touch communicates care, reassurance, and safety, and it plays a central role in maintaining emotional closeness in relationships. It reduces stress hormones, regulates heart rate, and fosters a sense of security even in moments of pain (Jakubiak, Feeney, & Brumbaugh, 2020).

Now, with that in mind, imagine a widow on stage. The lights are blinding, the cameras everywhere, the crowd massive, and the expectations even bigger. She’s trying to fill the space her husband once occupied, to stand steady in the aftermath of loss.

Is it reasonable for her to ground herself through affectionate touch? Of course! In fact, it would be strange if she didn’t. It’s not scandalous. It’s not desire. It’s self-regulation.

So, when Erika Kirk, hugs JD Vance, maybe… just maybe ... it isn’t lust. Maybe it’s loss.

Try Being Human Again

No one can tell intent from a five-second clip. But you can tell a lot about yourself from how you react to it. If your first instinct is to confidently assert there’s a scandal, maybe that says more about you than it does about her.

I’ve done it too. I’ve seen a clip, jumped to a conclusion, felt that rush of righteous certainty. It feels good for a moment, but it rots your empathy.

So, before we turn every public hug into a congressional hearing, let’s remember that not everything physical is sexual, and not everything emotional is performative.

Sometimes a hug is just a hug. And sometimes, that’s all someone has left.

Sources

• Shaver, P. R., & Mikulincer, M. (2008). Attachment and loss: A behavioral systems perspective. In M. Stroebe, R. O. Hansson, H. Schut, & W. Stroebe (Eds.), Handbook of bereavement research and practice: Advances in theory and intervention (pp. 63–87). American Psychological Association.

• Jakubiak, B. K., Feeney, B. C., & Brumbaugh, C. C. (2020). Affectionate touch and relational well-being: The mediating role of perceived partner responsiveness. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 37(5), 1381–1402.

• Jakubiak, B. K., & Feeney, B. C. (2017). Affectionate touch to promote relational, psychological, and physical well-being in adulthood: A theoretical model and review of the research. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 21(3), 228–252
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Psychologists and therapists alike love gratitude journals. It’s a simple intervention: every night before bed, jot down three things you’re grateful for. This easy habit is linked to reduced stress, reduced depression, better sleep, greater optimism, and maybe most importantly, stronger relationships. Having gratitude makes you warmer, more generous, and more forgiving.

All good things, right? Of course. But we need to accurately define the kind of value gratitude offers. Gratitude journals help with attitude, outlook, and relationships but they don’t help with performance. In fact, there’s a subtle one-down position created by constant gratitude. “I’m so grateful,” easily mutates into, “I’m so lucky to have anything at all. I should just be happy with what I have.” Psychologically, you’ve put yourself in the beneficiary position and removed your sense of agency.

I know I may sound like a curmudgeon, but this perspective is supported by gratitude researchers themselves, who describe gratitude as an other-focused emotion. You recognize benefits created by external entities, not by yourself. By definition, gratitude spotlights what was given to you, not what you created.

This mindset is very popular in workplace culture. Leaders are constantly trying to improve what they call “organizational citizenship behaviors,” i.e., how to get people to give back to the culture when it’s not in their job description. The answer is often to make them grateful for their experience. When people feel that things have been done for them, they’ll naturally want to reciprocate. That’s how you create a healthy culture. But there’s no evidence that gratitude journaling helps build assertiveness, ambition, or performance. There’s a lot of value there, but confidence isn’t the key outcome.

So, what if you replaced the gratitude journal with something that built personal agency, something that helped people recognize their ability to drive results, overcome challenges, and directly impact their environment? Instead of writing about what they are grateful for each night, what if they acknowledged their accomplishments?

Self-Determination Theory shows that competence is a key pillar of psychological health. When people believe they have control over their actions and are capable of mastery and growth, while also feeling a sense of belonging, they experience greater intrinsic motivation, creativity, persistence, and well-being. Gratitude journals help with relatedness, but they don’t improve autonomy or competence. In contrast, confidence journals help people recognize their own ability to create strong connections, learn new skills, and overcome challenges.

This idea of a confidence journal is well supported by research. Data around self-affirmation shows that people who write about their strengths, accomplishments, or values experience less defensiveness, less stress, and better problem-solving when under pressure. It builds resilience; the ability to face challenges without crumbling under stress.

There’s also adjacent research on self-efficacy: when people notice and record their own successful actions, their belief in their ability to do hard things increases. That belief predicts future effort, persistence, and performance. This holds true across sports, academics, and professional life.

So when we compare the two (gratitude versus confidence) focusing on personal agency and performance seems the clear winner. Which makes me wonder: why does the psychological community default to the softer, more deferential, more submissive gratitude journal? I have my theories. But maybe I’ll save that for another Windmills or Giants post.

In today’s presentation of “Personal Development Experts I Am Insanely Jealous Of,” I bring you Dr. Gary Chapman, the author of the seminal relationship book The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts.

Few books have enjoyed the staying power of The 5 Love Languages. Published in the early 90s, the book has been insanely popular for over 30 years. It provides couples with an accessible vocabulary for love and a blueprint for communication that feels straightforward, practical, and easy to apply in real life.

But the book drives me nuts… for two reasons.

Before I start complaining, let me say something nice.

While there is limited data supporting Dr. Chapman’s view that people express and feel love in five languages: acts of service, physical touch, words of affirmation, receiving gifts, and quality time, the fact that his book has helped couples take a more intentional approach to communication is exceptionally valuable. These ‘languages’ encourage people to be more aware and deliberate about how they connect. And that’s no small feat. Anything that helps people reflect instead of react is a big win in my book.

Okay. Time for the rant.

⸻

1. Love ≠ Desire

I believe Chapman blurs the line between what you want and how you experience love. That’s an important distinction and a big miss. The “love language” idea is meant to help recognize the subtle ways people show and communicate affection. Identifying these is healthy. It builds awareness, intentionality, and emotional connection. It highlights and increases deliberate communication of affection. That is the “love language.”

But that is very different from behaviors a person might want to see from their spouse. Preference is not the same as emotional nourishment.

I might want physical touch and score high on “Physical Touch” as my love language. But that does not mean I interpret sex as a marker of love. By the same token, just because my wife wants me to attend to the lawn more often (Acts of Service) doesn’t mean she experiences a burst of oxytocin from trimmed edges or raked leaves.

Why is this important? Because it can become, with little effort, an easy tool of manipulation.

Take men, for example. I don’t believe I’ve ever met a man who didn’t claim that “physical touch” was one of his top two love languages. Working within Chapman’s framework, a man could use this idea of showing and experiencing love to maneuver his partner’s behavior. In blunt terms, how many times have men washed the dishes hoping for a little love-language quid pro quo in the bedroom?

“I’m just telling you my love language, honey.”

That’s not love. That’s bartering.

⸻

2. The Narcissism Trap

The second problem is that the book turns love into a one-way street.

You read it, identify your love language, and then expect everyone else to adapt. It inevitably promotes an “adjust your behavior to fit me” or “I told you how I feel loved. If you don’t do that, it’s your fault” mentality.

That’s not great.

Because love isn’t just about expressing—it’s about recognizing that expression. It’s not only “How can my spouse love me better?” but also “How is my spouse already showing me love that I might be missing?”

The practical application goes like this: I identify physical touch as my love language and share this with my wife. Following the book’s framework, she might believe, incorrectly, that unless there is touching involved, I am not going to recognize any affection from her. The book suggests that it’s my wife’s responsibility to acknowledge my love language and to adjust her style of loving me—and vice versa.

For example, my wife Allison’s love language is acts of service. When she makes dinner, that’s her version of “I love you.” If I’m too busy waiting for a hug or other physical contact, I’ll completely miss her expression of love.

That’s the real danger of Chapman’s model. It trains people to focus on what they don’t get instead of noticing and appreciating what they do. It makes relationships transactional. It gives people a bestselling excuse to stay self-centered, causing them to overlook clear displays of affection and love.

The five love languages aren’t the problem. The problem is how we use them. They were meant to help us understand each other, not swapping chores for affection. Love isn’t a negotiation, it’s a conversation. And the best relationships are the ones where both people keep talking, even when they don’t speak the same dialect.

One of my first classes in grad school was called Theories of Marriage and Family Therapy. It was my first semester, and I remember walking in nervous but fired up, finally about to learn how to actually do this therapy thing.

We read this book called The Family Crucible by Augustus Napier and Carl Whitaker. It’s a classic in family therapy circles, the story of a family who comes to therapy because their daughter, Claudia, is “the problem.” She’s acting out, rebelling, causing chaos. But as the therapy unfolds, it becomes clear Claudia isn’t the problem at all. She’s the symptom, the family’s canary in the coal mine.

After studying the book, we watched a video of Carl Whitaker working with a family struggling with their marriage. As a therapist, Whitaker was wild, provocative, blunt, emotional, and completely unafraid of conflict. He didn’t smooth things over; he invited the mess. At one point, he literally stood between the couple and pushed them into confrontation.

My professor paused the video and asked, “What do you think of this intervention?”

I raised my hand and said, “Honestly? It seems reckless. They came here to save their marriage, and he’s escalating things. What if they leave and get divorced?”

The room went silent. Maybe nobody gasped out loud, but it felt like they did. My professor looked at me and said, “It’s not his job to keep the family together.”

Her point was that therapy isn’t about steering people toward the outcome you want. It’s about helping them explore themselves and make their own choices. “As a therapist, you don’t impose your values on your clients,” she said.

That lesson stuck with me. Therapy isn’t about showing people what’s you think is right. It’s about helping them figure out what’s right for them.

And that is both therapy’s greatest strength and its biggest problem.

On one end of the spectrum, you have the obvious disasters, therapists who use their power to push an ideology. Gay “reparative therapy,” for example, is one of the most unethical practices imaginable. Trying to “fix” someone’s sexuality through religion or shame is abusive and explicitly banned by every major psychological association.

But on the other end, therapy can fail in a quieter way. Many therapists today are so cautious about imposing values that they avoid having any opinion at all. Their job, as they see it, is to support their client’s perception of well-being, not to challenge it.

So, when a client says they’re going back to an abusive partner, the therapist might say things like, “What makes you think it’ll be different this time?” or “How do you feel in that situation?” But they’ll stop short of saying, “That’s a terrible idea.” Even when it obviously is.

I hear versions of this outside the therapy room all the time: “My therapist thinks my husband’s an asshole.” “My therapist told me I should step into my power.” “My therapist said I deserve a raise.”

And I always think, “Really? Or is your therapist just reflecting you back to yourself?” Because nine times out of ten, the therapist’s “advice” aligns perfectly with the client’s worldview.

That’s not because the therapist is manipulative. It’s because validation feels good. It’s safe. It keeps people coming back. But it also raises a hard question: can therapists actually be trusted to guide your thinking?

The honest answer is no, not if you’re expecting objectivity. A good therapist doesn’t tell you what to think; they help you see how you think. That’s powerful. But it only works if both sides understand the deal.

When clients start mistaking validation for wisdom, and when therapists start mistaking validation for helping, that’s when therapy goes bad.

Here’s why I’m annoyed.

Adam and Brene do this thing too frequently. They have, at least from where I sit, clear philosophical and political orientations. Nothing wrong with that. We all do. But the problem is that they tend to shoehorn data into those orientations. And because they are articulate, thoughtful, and generally well intentioned, their audience applauds every word like it’s gospel.

We clap so loudly that we forget to actually listen.

Take this latest example. Adam and Brene Brown made the point that we should stop talking about executive presence and charisma because those concepts are supposedly proxies for discrimination against introverts and women.

Okay. But here’s what actually matters. Is there value in charisma? Is there value in executive presence?

Forget who it benefits or disadvantages for a moment. In the real world, do these traits create value? The answer, whether or not Adam or Brene want to admit it, is absolutely yes.

When we say, “I don’t like this thing humans respond positively to because it disadvantages people I like,” or, “I don’t have this trait, so let’s make sure nobody else gets credit for it,” then that’s not progress. That’s just sour grapes dressed up as social justice.

Let’s run a thought experiment.

What if I said, “You know what? I don’t like all this talk about mindfulness.”

By Adam and Brene’s logic, mindfulness could be seen as a proxy for discrimination against young men. Statistically, young men are less comfortable with mindfulness practices. And extroverts? They struggle with it too. It’s hard for them to sit quietly and introspect. So in response to these difficulties, what if I said, “Let’s stop promoting mindfulness because it’s unfair to men and extroverts”?

You’d probably say, “David, that’s a ridiculous position.”

And you’d be right.

Mindfulness is valuable. The solution isn’t to ban the idea. It’s to help people adapt to it. The better, more helpful response, would be to tell men and extroverts, “Here’s how you can work on being more reflective, more composed, more self aware.”

That’s growth.

Now, back to charisma and executive presence. Instead of tossing those concepts in the garbage, why not have a more useful conversation?

What if we talked about the behaviors and strategies anyone, regardless of gender or personality, can use to become more charismatic or improve their presence?

Imagine if Adam and Brene had focused the discussion on teaching their audience to master micro engagements, those small moments with key stakeholders that build trust and influence. What if they had discussed displaying warmth in social interactions, leveraging curiosity to create connections or creating interest through story telling?

They could have highlighted how female leaders like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Indra Nooyi, or Angela Merkel have cultivated presence without needing to be loud or flashy. They projected authority through calm control, simplified messages, and relentless preparation. Those are learnable skills. That’s where the value is.

Instead, we got a catchy headline and a round of applause.

And that’s the real shame. When you have a platform as big as Adam Grant and Brene Brown’s, you owe your audience something more than viral soundbites. You owe them nuance.

That said, Adam and Brene, if you somehow read this, I love you both. Truly. You’ve changed the field. You’ve translated complex psychology into something millions of people can actually use.

You’re the best we’ve got.

Even if, every now and then, I find myself writing an annoyed essay about you.