The Archive
Essays, episodes, and reflections — one new piece of each, every week.
The Latest
THIS WEEK'S ESSAY
When Everything is Trauma, What is Human?
The field of trauma therapy has given us an increasingly expansive framework for understanding human suffering — one that now risks explaining nearly all adult difficulty as the consequence of a damaged childhood. This essay examines concept creep, the phenomenon by which clinical terms gradually lower their threshold to include less extreme experiences, and traces how it has reshaped the way people understand their own stories.Â
THIS WEEK'S EPISODE
Is Everything Trauma?
The word trauma has changed. What once described an experience that overwhelmed the nervous system beyond its capacity to cope now appears on social media infographics as an explanation for low self-worth, relationship struggles, and everyday emotional difficulty. In this episode, we look at concept creep — the gradual lowering of the threshold for harm-related language — and ask what it actually costs us to call the friction of being human a disorder.
THIS WEEK'S REFLECTION
You Are Allowed to Have Been Affected
For when something was hard — and you're not sure you have the right word for it, the right label, or enough of a reason for it to count. This meditation asks you to set down the search for a verdict and simply acknowledge what you lived through. You don't need a diagnosis, a guilty party, or anyone's agreement for your experience to be real.
Many people arrive at healing through insight. They learn the language of attachment, name their patterns with impressive precision, and trace their reactions back through family systems and early experience. They can explain themselves clearly. They understand why they are the way they are. For a w...
I want to answer a question that came in from someone who’s started the process of unbecoming. It’s a really good question, and I suspect it’s one that comes up for a lot of people:
“I’ve done a lot of therapy, journaling, and self-work. I intellectually understand myself pretty well, but I still...
I spent most of my twenties trying to assemble a better version of myself. I kept a running inventory of my flaws, a mental record of every awkward comment, every relational misstep, every pattern I wished I could smooth out and improve. My inner world felt like a construction site. I collected ther...
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