We live in an age that worships efficiency. Groceries arrive with a swipe, the rent pays itself, and a cheerful kiosk replaces the receptionist. Faster, cheaper, tidier.

But as ad man Rory Sutherland likes to point out, efficiency often blinds us to meaning.

He calls it the Doorman Fallacy: the belief that a doorman’s only job is to open a door.

By that logic, you can replace him with an automatic sliding door and call it progress.

Except the sliding door doesn’t greet you, reassure you, or lend the building its sense of dignity. The doorman wasn’t just functional—he was symbolic.

Couples fall into the same trap at home. They reduce each other to jobs: provider, scheduler, housekeeper, sexual partner. Then they wonder why the marriage feels more like an airport concourse than a relationship.

Amsterdam: city of canals, tulips, and recently a thousand folks explaining how to monetize their genitals in the gig economy.

Europe’s largest pornography conference took over a riverside hotel, which is ordinarily the sort of place where German capitalists meet to discuss their supply chains.

Last week, however, it was flooded with roller skates, sequined bras, and the relentless optimism of people who believe burnout can be solved with branding.

Out in the lobby, two buses of American retirees clutched their tickets for the cheese-and-windmill tour.

They looked on in horror as women in diamanté heels rolled past with ring lights. The retirees will, most likely, never recover.

Imagine this: you’ve spent years convinced you’re lazy, weak, or simply “bad at life.”

Then one afternoon in a beige office, a clinician leans back in their swivel chair and says: “You have ADHD.”

Suddenly, it all clicks. The shame softens. Your story rearranges itself. You’re not defective—you’re diagnosed.

That emotional pivot has a name of its own: the Rumpelstiltskin effect.

Psychiatrist Awais Aftab and philosopher Alan Levinovitz coined the term in 2025, comparing the relief of diagnosis to the fairy tale where learning Rumpelstiltskin’s name breaks the spell.

Across cultures, the power of naming—of turning the mysterious into the knowable—has always been the first step toward control, healing, or escape.

But like most good fairy tales, there’s a darker counter-narrative. In American mental health culture, many argue that psychiatric labels don’t free us—they trap us. For some, diagnosis feels less like a flashlight in the dark and more like a branding iron.

So who’s right? Let’s dig in.

When people hear the word hoarding, they often imagine a reality-TV spectacle: stacks of newspapers, narrow walkways, and a kitchen buried under clutter.

But in everyday life, hoarding is more complex—especially when we consider how it connects to neurodiversity.

Hoarding isn’t just about keeping “too much stuff.”

For many neurodivergent souls, it’s tied to the way their brains handle memory, attachment, and uncertainty. What looks like disorganization from the outside can be a coping strategy on the inside.

Walk through a typical American airport: fluorescent lights, vinyl floors, anxious crowds. It looks like stress had a baby with laminate.

Now imagine the opposite—a vaulted cathedral, a redwood grove, or just a row house with consistent cornice lines. One scene depletes; the other restores.

The difference isn’t luxury. It’s beauty.

When beauty recedes, cultures don’t collapse spectacularly. They just eventually get bone-tired.

Beauty isn’t frippery. It matters to our nervous systems.

Patients with tree-view windows healed faster than those facing brick walls (Ulrich, 1984). Natural environments, with soft fascination, relieve attention fatigue and calm cortisol levels (Kaplan, 1995).

Neuroscience confirms as much: beauty activates the medial orbitofrontal cortex (a reward hub) and the default-mode network—our brain’s meaning-making machinery (Ishizu & Zeki, 2011; Vessel et al., 2012; Vessel et al., 2019).

In short: beauty steadies the wheel in our brains.

"Thinking in Speech" (TiS) isn’t just another autism therapy—it’s an intentional way of learning to talk to oneself with purpose, clarity, and calm.

Developed by Janice Nathan, an autistic speech-language pathologist, TiS teaches children to build an inner voice that supports planning, emotional steadiness, and self-soothing—not through worksheets or routines, but by activating inner strength.

In 2025, researchers published a pilot randomized-controlled trial in Autism Research. Twenty-two autistic children received the TiS therapy—sixteen 30-minute sessions delivered remotely by nine trained speech-language pathologists.

Compared to a waitlist group, children in the TiS group showed statistically significant improvement in emotional distress (measured by the Emotion Dysregulation Inventory (EDI)) and a marginal trend toward improved reactivity.

Most people know the word serendipity—a lucky accident, a happy surprise. But have you heard of its darker twin, zemblanity?

Coined by novelist William Boyd in Armadillo (1998), zemblanity describes the inevitable, unhappy discovery you saw coming all along. It’s sorta the opposite of serendipity.

In love and marriage, zemblanity shows up when couples keep circling back to the same arguments: money, sex, in-laws, or who left the lights on.

If you’ve ever thought “Here we go again” in your relationship, you’ve met zemblanity.

And that’s when a couples therapist like me earns their keep.

People with ADHD are more prone to boredom because of attention and working memory challenges. Here’s what new research reveals—and what helps.

A new study in the Journal of Attention Disorders confirms what most people with ADHD could tell you without a grant: boredom hits harder and more often.

Young adults with ADHD traits scored nearly two standard deviations higher in boredom proneness than their peers (Orban, Blessing, Sandone, Conness, & Santer, 2024).

The underlying issue is executive function—the set of mental tools that help us pay attention, hold information in mind, and finish what we start. When those systems misfire, even mildly dull tasks feel unbearable.

AI isn’t just in your workplace—it’s also in your love life.

A new study in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships found that a surprising number of Americans are experimenting with AI-generated romance.

Young men, in particular, are chatting with AI “partners,” following AI-generated accounts, and consuming AI porn.

And the more people use these tools, the more likely they are to report depression and lower life satisfaction.

Romantic AI isn’t fringe anymore. Nearly one in five adults have tried an AI “romantic partner,” and over a quarter of young adults have done so (Willoughby et al., 2025).

Even more striking, people in committed relationships are more likely than singles to engage with romantic AI.

This lines up with research on parasocial relationships—the one-way emotional bonds we form with media figures, now upgraded to chatbots that never roll their eyes.

We’ve all heard it: “Actions speak louder than words.”

A new study in Evolutionary Psychological Science suggests that this old line still carries weight—especially for women (Shu & Zeng, 2025).

Men, it turns out, are more likely to be moved by words like “I love you” or “I miss you.”

Women, by contrast, put more stock in sweet actions—those everyday gestures like making a meal, running an errand, or quietly folding the laundry without being asked.

Why? Because actions say you’re dependable in a way words alone can’t.

Remember when the pinnacle of modern romance was the “power couple”? Matching blazers, networking at charity galas, curated Instagram smiles. That era is quietly fading.

Welcome to Marriage 3.0, where the new status symbol isn’t a joint brand—it’s Dual Individualism: two people with distinct public personas and passions, yet a private life that’s intimate, steady, and surprisingly supportive.

What Is Dual Individualism?

Dual individualism is the exact opposite of enmeshment.

It’s not two halves making a whole—it’s two wholes choosing to coexist without diluting themselves.

Many folks have a story about a miracle.

A cancer scan that comes back clear. A loved one surviving an accident against all odds. Or simply making it through a season of life that seemed impossible.

But what does believing in miracles actually do for our mental health?

A new study in Mental Health, Religion & Culture offers an intriguing answer: sometimes, belief in miracles can buffer against depression—but not for everyone, and not in the same way.