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.
Most of us are operating under a premise we don’t even notice anymore. It is so pervasive, so woven into the water we swim in, that it just feels like the truth.
The premise is this:Â Something is missing.
Something from our lives is missing. Something from within ourselves is missing. And if we co...
Last week, I shared a podcast and essay about emotional maturity and emotional distance, and one of you asked a very practical question: What do you actually do in the moment when you feel like you’re about to lose it? When everything inside you is spilling over, when you’re reacting in ways you kno...
Sometimes I don’t realize I’m burned out until it’s already too late.
It’s less like noticing and more like waking up from a dizzying dream to find myself completely empty and suddenly on the edge of explosion.
This happened a few weeks ago with my husband. Everything was fine—until it wasn’t.
I ...
The Unbecoming Hub Podcast
A space for reflecting on what it means to be human without turning it into a project.
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