From Feelings to Filters

Let’s begin with the central irony of modern therapeutic culture: a society finally brave enough to talk about mental health… is also quietly teaching its citizens to detach, dissociate, and “guard their peace” like it’s the last bag of Hot Cheetos during a quarantine.

Mental health memes have gone mainstream. But what happens when “not giving a fuck” is marketed as a treatment plan?

We’ll call this phenomenon Therapeutic DGAF: a curated cocktail of boundaries, avoidance, trauma lingo, and the occasional side of serotonin.

The Birth of the American Shrug

Once upon a time, in the New World, long before TikTok turned nihilism into a duet, Americans gave a lot of fucks.

About freedom. About God. About lawn care.

And then—somewhere between Nixon’s jowls sweating on live TV and the last unreplied AOL Instant Message—the national emotional thermostat started cooling.

Welcome to the postmodern soulscape: irony is armor, detachment is currency, and emotional economy is measured in fucks not given.

We’re talking about the meme-ification of apathy, the industrialization of DGAF. We're tracing the weird, winding tributaries that spilled into the cultural Mississippi that now runs through Instagram captions, startup logos, and millennial memoirs.

Let’s shatter the myth: not all couples resolve arguments before the dishwasher cycle ends. Asynchronous repair is a relationship strategy—often emerging from neurodivergent, trauma-aware partnerships—where one partner needs immediate comfort and the other needs to take a walk, or possibly a nap, before offering any semblance of coherence.

It’s not neglect. It’s neurobiology.

This concept, once fringe, is now finding traction across Reddit, TikTok therapy corners, and digital couples’ therapy sessions. Especially among ADHD and autistic partners, asynchronous repair reframes silence not as disconnection, but as regulation.

As Porges’ (2011) polyvagal theory explains, some nervous systems short-circuit in real-time conflict. They need to downshift, not debate.

In the ongoing saga of “Why is this person so weird and hard to be around?”, psychologists have once again trained their lenses on narcissists.

And fair enough—narcissism is often an elegant explanation for behavior that feels disorienting, self-centered, or socially clumsy.

But what if that elegance is a bit too convenient?

What if this body of research—while meticulously designed and statistically sound—is accidentally mistaking neurodivergent misattunement for narcissistic malevolence?

Let’s ask, as any decent therapist or slightly paranoid AI should: Are we conflating narcissism with neurodiversity… again?

Resentment is a classic sign of relational devitalization. And it’s a stubborn little beast.

It survives logic, outlasts apologies, and festers even in therapy sessions where everyone’s crying and nodding and vowing to “move forward.”

It hides behind polite smiles, weaponized silence, and passive-aggressive dish placement.

In couples therapy, it’s often the uninvited third partner, sitting in the corner like an unpaid intern with a grudge and a clipboard.

But here’s the hard clinical truth: the only cure for resentment is grieving what you didn’t get.

Not revenge. Not justice.

Not a better version of the person who hurt you. Not even closure, which is often just revenge with a self-help filter.

No—grief. Real, guttural, bone-deep grief. The kind that doesn’t expect the other person to change. The kind that recognizes you might never get what you needed.

Affairs don’t always vanish when they end. Sometimes they hang around in your marriage like a song stuck on a loop—subtle, persistent, emotionally disruptive.

Maybe your husband swears he’s done. Maybe he is done.

But still—something’s off. His eyes drift in conversation.

He’s melancholic, jumpy, distracted. You sense he’s somewhere else, and that somewhere smells like someone else’s shampoo.

This post might help. Not just for spotting the signs your husband misses his affair partner—but for understanding why, what it means, and how couples can rebuild from this strange and painful limbo between betrayal and rebirth.

You haven’t talked to your mom all week. But suddenly, out of nowhere, you feel a ripple in the Force.

Anxiety?
Sadness?
A sudden urge to text her just to check in?

And then it happens:
Ding. Your mom texts first.

“Hey hon, are you mad at me?”

Welcome toTether Theory: the idea that every family member is psychically or emotionally “corded” to the system—and when one person tugs, everyone else feels it, even if they don’t understand why.

“I drafted a 3-act monologue in my head. Then I said, ‘It’s fine.’”

You walk into the kitchen and your sister says that thing again.

By 2:00 a.m., you’ve mentally authored:

• A searing TED Talk

• A boundary-setting masterclass

A final, scathing “and that’s why I’m in therapy” mic drop.

But in real life?

You smiled.
You changed the subject.
You helped her unload the dishwasher.

Welcome to Silent Rehearsal: the mental, emotional, and occasionally poetic act of drafting unsaid confrontations.

It’s more than rumination. It’s the inner soap opera of the emotionally fluent and externally restrained.

Sleep paralysis is the uncomfortable overlap between biology and metaphysics, the moment when your brain reboots before your body catches up.

The lights are on. No one’s home.

You’re conscious, pinned, and—if you’re unlucky—hallucinating that something else is in the room with you.

This is not a metaphor.

It’s the central nervous system behaving like a terrified bureaucrat who lost the protocol.

The result is temporary immobility, sometimes lasting seconds, sometimes minutes, often accompanied by vivid hallucinations.

The experience is ancient, common, and often terrifying.

Modern neuroscience blames REM dysregulation. Earlier humans blamed demons. And to be perfectly honest, the older version makes more emotional sense.

Once upon a time, families divvied up chores by task: trash, laundry, cooking, lawn. But in 2025, there’s a new category of labor lurking beneath the surface: emotional trigger management.

It’s not in the chore chart—but someone’s always doing it.

• “Don’t bring up politics around Grandpa—he’ll explode.”

• “Let me talk to Mom first; she listens to me.”

• “Can you tell your sister we’re running late? She won’t yell at you.”

• “Just pretend you forgot about the wedding RSVP. I’ll smooth it over later.”

This isn’t kindness.

This is invisible crisis brokerage.

A daily, unpaid job of managing other people’s dysregulated nervous systems.

In short: trigger management has become a family job, and most of the time, one person ends up doing it all.

And spoiler alert: it’s usually the most emotionally attuned, boundary-compromised, exhausted woman in the room.

You expect teens to withdraw. Slam doors. Listen to music you’re not allowed to ask about. Get strangely territorial about oat milk.

What you don’t expect is the parent to disappear first.

But it’s happening. More than you think.

Call it Parental Ghosting—a slow, barely perceptible exit from emotional availability.

Not physical abandonment, but something much more subtle.

The body is present, but the self has gone dim.

Smiling at dinner, but not in the room. Nodding, but not listening. Present in photos, but blurred at the edges of family life.

We’ve talked about ghosting in dating. In friendships. Even in workplaces.

But what happens when mom starts emotionally ghosting the family before her youngest hits senior year?

Or dad becomes a stoic specter in the house, emotionally AWOL but still in charge of the thermostat?

This isn’t neglect in the classic sense. It’s adult dissociation in slow motion, and it’s spreading in quiet, unacknowledged waves.

There are some fears you grow out of.

Monsters under the bed. Lightning. Pop quizzes.

And then there are the ones you grow into. Like tax audits. Or group texts. Or clowns.

Let’s stop pretending fear of clowns is irrational. Let’s start calling it what it is:
A perfectly reasonable survival mechanism that your ancestors gave you so you wouldn’t trust creatures with smiles that don’t blink.

Coulrophobia—yes, it has a name—isn’t about whimsy. It’s about false signals, broken social contracts, and the terror of being invited into someone else's chaos performance without your consent. And it has a long, winding history, from ancient myth to corporate mascots to horror film legends.

This is my deep dive into why clown fear isn’t the punchline.
It’s the punchline’s revenge.