psychology

  • My Own Hell

    If I were to manufacture a hell for someone with body dysmorphia and/or an eating disorder, it would be this.

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  • Dick Pick Etiquette

    Dick Pick Etiquette

    Leaving motives and judgements aside, for those of you who send, let’s instead just touch on some basic dick pic etiquette.

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  • October Rising

    To put it frankly and in my signature vernacular: things are fucked. Around this mark in the calendar each year I tend to fall into a depression sink hole, even in this best of years, and this is far from the best of years. I don’t know if it is the transition from hated summer…

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  • Go with It

    As our plane began to land in Baghdad, it went dark. The crew extinguished the cabin lights, floor lighting, exit lights, indicators. The resulting black consumed us, startling and unnerving. It felt so unnatural to be floating in a darkened aircraft. If it weren’t for the engines still vibrating under the wings, the plane could…

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  • Modeling Motivation

    When I started “modeling,” I think I was chasing a way to feel positively about my appearance. In the wake of my most self-destructive phase, I needed to manufacture some semblance of confidence from the shattered pieces of my sense of self. I knew I could never be classified as conventionally pretty or skinny, but…

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  • Old Wounds

    I recently had an otherwise innocuous experience dig up some very old and relatively unrelated trauma. Considering the disconnect and the disproportionate emotional surge, I considered this a warning sign and an indication that I should probably finally go and address the issue. I have effectively avoided actually discussing it in 15 years of sporadic…

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  • The Other Side

    Some days (most days), I do not have time to be crazy. Yet crazy I remain. I just surfaced from the longest depression cycle I can remember since I used to drink all my feelings. Unlike my usual three day lows, this was over a month of symptoms reading like a flyer for depression, which…

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  • Common Themes

    Every writer has common themes around which their brains and hence stories fixate. If you read any author long enough, you will see the same turns of phrase, images, scenarios. You can even chronologically identify a work based on the author’s fixations at the time, like stratifications in an excavation. I am no exception. I…

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  • If you are familiar with my reviewing practices, I like to give my bottom line up front (BLUF) then dissect it in detail. My BLUF for 13 Reasons Why (both the Netflix series and book) is that I loved them and hated them, simultaneously. In either case, I recommend reading/watching to explore your own opinions. You…

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  • Demon Within

    I have a demon living in my leg. It is nestled deep below my flesh, far below the surface where anyone can see, invisible and out of sight. Yet I can feel it in the razor edges of its shape. I feel it as it pierces deeper toward my skeleton. The intruder roots deep in my…

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