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“Choking” Isn’t Harmless Kink—And Its Global Spread Tells an Uneasy Story
Strangling a partner during sex has leapt from niche BDSM play and Japanese shibari clubs to bedrooms and college dorms on nearly every continent.
Large‑scale surveys show that the practice—often marketed online as edgy “rough sex”—is now common in anglophone countries and rising fast elsewhere.
Yet biomedical data keep reminding us of an inconvenient truth: there is no physiologically safe way to compress someone’s airway or carotid arteries for pleasure.
The Silent Stereotype: How Sexism Fuels Denial of Male Victimhood in Relationships
In a culture hyper-aware of injustice—where microaggressions can spark think pieces and emoji use is a political act—you’d think we’d be past the idea that only women can be victims of abuse.
But a new study in Psychology of Men & Masculinities suggests otherwise.
The researchers didn’t just find implicit bias—they built a scale to measure it. It’s called the Intimate Partner Violence Myths Toward Male Victims (IPVMM) scale, and its message is clear: we’re still not taking male victimization seriously—and sexism is to blame (Russell, Cox, & Stewart, 2024).
Trauma Mismatch in Relationships
It starts innocently. A raised eyebrow, a tone that comes too sharp, a forgotten appointment. The partner with trauma flinches—not visibly, but somewhere deep and involuntary.
The other partner, perhaps raised in emotional safety, is confused: What just happened? I only said I’d be five minutes late.
This is trauma mismatch.
And it is not rare. It is becoming one of the most quietly destabilizing forces in modern couples therapy.
One partner’s nervous system lives in a battlefield. The other grew up in a library.
They fall in love. They move in. They try to split chores and build a life. But the nervous systems don’t match—and so intimacy becomes a series of misfired signals and accidental injuries.
“Quiet Orphaning”: The Slow-Fade Estrangement of a Generation
Or, How Gen Z Learned to Ghost Their Parents Without Smashing a Single Plate
In another era, family estrangement arrived with the drama of a stage play: slammed doors, shouted ultimatums, maybe even a birthday party ruined by a bottle of wine and some long-simmering truths.
But now? Estrangement has gotten quiet. Sneaky. Bureaucratic, even.
Adult children are walking away not in rage but in silence. They stop answering texts. They miss a few birthdays.
They “forget” to return a call. Over time, the thread wears thin. Then one day, the parent realizes they’ve become someone their child used to know.
Researchers call it “low-contact.”
Reddit users call it “voluntary orphaning.” Parents call it betrayal. And therapists? We're calling it a symptom of something bigger.
Why Now?
The Covert Narcissist Divorce Epidemic
Covert narcissists kick down the door shouting, “Behold, it is I!” slipping in through the mail slot, borrowing your sweater, and softly complain it itches.
Thanks to TikTok therapists and hashtag diagnostics, clinical offices are now crowded with clients carrying self-applied labels—and lawyers wielding affidavits that read like DSM-5 karaoke.
The term "narc" has become the internet’s new four-letter word, while in real life, judges wrestle with a murky question: where does diagnosable personality disorder end and plain old spite begin? (Seo & Kim, 2024)
Why Now?
Rethinking Breakfast and Depression, One Skipped Meal at a Time
If you’re depressed and skipping breakfast, science has something tepid and interesting to say: they might be related.
But not in the way your grandmother insisted when she told you, “No toast, no future.”
A new study out of Hong Kong (Wong et al., 2024) suggests there’s a statistically significant—though clinically modest—link between skipping breakfast and depressive symptoms in young people.
The mechanism? Impaired attentional control, which might be the scientific equivalent of staring into space while someone tells you your GPA is tanking.
But before we panic and declare war on empty stomachs, let’s consider what this research really tells us—and what it doesn’t.
We will explore this from two angles: with compassion for the human condition and suspicion for our overeager interpretations of weak correlations.
Delusional Jealousy, Daggers, and Dopamine: What is Othello Syndrome?
Once upon a Tuesday, a woman stabbed her husband with a kitchen knife—not out of rage, or revenge, or some carefully cataloged betrayal, but because she believed he had seduced her younger sister.
He hadn’t. But her brain told her otherwise.
This wasn’t a Shakespearean tragedy, though the name it now carries—Othello syndrome—tips its hat to the Bard.
This was a clinical case report out of Morocco (Hjiej et al., 2024), published in Neurocase, where a seemingly ordinary stroke turned into a portal for psychotic jealousy.
Welcome to the strange land where blood clots spark betrayal, thalami go rogue, and love, quite literally, loses its mind.
7 Subtle Signs You’re Being Love Bombed—And How to Slow Things Down Before You Get Hurt
Falling for someone new can feel exhilarating.
The long texts, the spontaneous gifts, the breathless compliments—it all adds up to a heady cocktail of romance.
But sometimes, what seems like a dream come true is actually the opening act of manipulation.
Let’s revisit love bombing—a tactic often used by those with narcissistic or controlling traits to gain rapid influence over a partner through overwhelming affection and attention (Stines, 2017).
Unlike healthy romantic excitement, love bombing often feels too intense too fast, and leaves you emotionally dizzy.
Below are 7 subtle signs that may indicate you're not being adored—you’re being targeted.
You Can’t Judge a Book by Its Cover—But You’ll Do It Anyway: Misfiring Minds and the Myth of Tattoo Psychology
A new study out of the Journal of Research in Personality confirms what some tattooed folks have known since the first ink met skin: people are hilariously confident—and largely wrong—when they try to read your soul based on your sleeve.
Let’s start with the experiment.
The researchers corralled 274 tattooed adults (mostly women, mostly White, spanning 18 to 70) and asked them to complete the classic Big Five personality assessment.
Then, they took photographs of the participants’ tattoos and collected the stories behind them.
Meanwhile, 30 psychology-savvy raters were tasked with reviewing the tattoos—some with just the image, others with both image and personal meaning—and asked to assess the wearer’s personality.
And assess they did. Cheerful colors? Must be an agreeable
person. Big bold designs? Clearly an extrovert. A skull with a serpent wrapped around it? Neurotic as hell.
These snap judgments weren’t just consistent—they were confidently consistent. Everyone was vibing the same way about each tattoo, nodding in unison like they’d cracked some secret personality code.
And they were wrong. Almost all of them.
Functional Dissociation in Couples: When Love Goes on Autopilot
So the two of you aren’t fighting. You’re not flirting either.
You’re managing schedules. Paying bills.
Swapping logistical texts about Trader Joe’s runs and whose turn it is to get the kid with strep. You share a bed, but not a nervous system.
Welcome to functional dissociation—the quiet purgatory where many modern couples live.
No shouting matches. No passion. Just… performance.
And therapists are finally catching up.
What Is Functional Dissociation?
In trauma theory, dissociation describes a disconnection from the self—thoughts, feelings, memories, bodily sensations. It’s how the brain says, “Too much.”
But we’re now seeing that this coping style doesn’t stay locked in individual experience. It becomes the ambient weather system in a relationship.
Functional dissociation in couples is the mutual, adaptive numbing that lets a relationship survive—but not thrive. It's not classic avoidant attachment. It's not stonewalling. It's more like… ghosting, together.
From Knick-Knacks to Legacy: A Deep Dive into American Hoarding—And How to Talk Mom Down from the Attic
American elders hoard belongings—and feelings—at record rates. Learn the science, the stigma, and Swedish death-cleaning tactics that actually work.
Walk into any big-box store on a Saturday and you’ll see the national pastime: refilling already-full houses.
Public surveys find that U.S. consumers rent 49,000 self-storage facilities—more than Starbucks and McDonald’s combined.
No wonder the Senate Special Committee on Aging recently flagged hoarding as a “quiet public-health crisis” for older adults, estimating 6.2 % prevalence in seniors versus 2 % in younger cohorts.
Why the age skew?
Survivors of the Great Depression, Cold-War rationing, and 1970s inflation internalized a scarcity mantra—waste not, want not.
By 2025, that thrifty reflex collides head-on with Amazon Prime.
Result: floor-to-ceiling Rubbermaid history lessons plus a growing chorus of first-born children begging Mom and Dad to downsize.
Teen Psychopathy and Premature Death: A Discussion of Screening, Risk, and Treatment
Teens with high psychopathic traits are dying young at alarming rates. Here’s what every therapist, school, and policymaker needs to know about screening and saving lives.
A groundbreaking study published in Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology followed 332 incarcerated youth over a 10- to 14-year period.
What researchers found was grim: teens with high psychopathic traits (scoring 30+ on the PCL:YV) had an 18.3% mortality rate before age 35, more than double the rate of lower-scoring peers (Maurer et al., 2025).
“Eleven of the sixty participants who scored 30 or above died during the follow-up period... a mortality rate nearly ten times the expected base rate” (Maurer et al., 2025, p. 21).
These weren’t overdoses from untreated depression alone, or violence explained by poverty. The predictive factor wasn’t trauma, conduct disorder, or ADHD. It was psychopathic traits.