Maladaptive daydreaming is when you're listening to music, watching a movie, or just staring into space while imagining different scenarios in your head,' she explained in a recent TikTok video. 'It is a form of dissociation where your brain is imagining alternate realities to cope with how scary your actual reality is,' she added. LePera explained that often in these scenarios, people will replay situations where you have the 'perfect response' to a past uncomfortable interaction.
Around the office, people clutch coffee like a life raft, waiting for their brains to come online and cursing the 8 a.m. meeting. And the cheerful colleague. But at least they got in early enough to find parking and grab coffee before it ran out-this time. Now: which person are you? The early riser, or the one watching them, wondering why you can never feel that awake at this hour no matter how hard you try?
'The cousin is slipping mentally and I think they were put under pressure by other relatives who stand to benefit' Query: Dear Mary Frances, I'm in a very difficult situation with my wider family and don't know what to do. An elderly cousin of mine, a farmer, has been in a nursing home for quite some time. Their farm is rented out and I was put in charge of their finances, managing the rent of the farm to a neighbour, who has taken good care of it.
What's the big idea? Why do we fall into the same patterns-whether that's people-pleasing, perfectionism, or emotional numbing-even when we know they're not good for us? These strategies help us feel safe, but replacing that armor with inner strength lets us move with freedom instead of fear. Listen to the audio version of this Book Bite-read by Kati herself-in the Next Big Idea App. 1. Control is a survival strategy.
First, if you're already living an active lifestyle, we know from research that you've likely built some stress resilience already. While it's impossible to avoid periodic stress, active folks are more likely to weather stressful periods. To quote Nowacka-Chmielewska et al (2022), "Exercise can significantly alter the CNS [central nervous system] expression pattern of several genes and pathways strongly related to vulnerability to stress, and various molecules have been already identified."
You spent hours picking nursery colors and finishes, agonized over the Snoo or a regular crib, and picked out their homecoming outfit months in advance. You planned every detail, expecting your first moments at home with your baby to be some of the most joyful of your life. When that time does come, instead of basking in happiness, you're overcome by anxiety, sadness and hopelessness, making the baby's needs feel overwhelming.
I just want to talk to whoever has romanticised the idea of being a new mom. When you're in a flurry of diaper changes, following a two-hourly pumping schedule and meticulously cleaning and mixing up bottles while running on less sleep than you've ever had, mommyhood ends up being more of a frenzied checklist of tasks to get done and not enough time snuggling and making babytalk with a babbling infant.
Even when our own lives are relatively stable, constant exposure to war, political unrest, climate crises, and humanitarian suffering activates the brain's threat system. The nervous system is not designed to distinguish between danger that is physically nearby and danger that is emotionally vivid or repeatedly witnessed. Over time, this creates chronic vigilance. When people observe patterns of harm, exclusion, or dehumanization playing out publicly, the body registers risk.
If you saw something in the sky that you genuinely could not explain-something now officially categorized as an unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP-would you tell your therapist or psychiatrist? For many people, the honest answer is no. Not because they doubt their own perception, but because they worry about what might happen next. They fear being seen as unstable, having the experience reframed as a symptom, or having it documented in a way that could affect future care, employment, or credibility.
"In the still of that late winter night, 1979, for the first time I laid in bed, cold and numb except for a thin, hot streak coursing through my head, and fantasized about killing my father." These words hung conspicuously at the end of one of the essays I wrote for my MFA thesis last year. My collection of childhood stories included this account of the time when I was 14 years old and my dad had just roughed up my 17-year-old brother.
Common advice like limiting individual youth access to screens, or asking parents to keep tabs on their children's every digital movement is not only impossible, but for adolescents in particular, potentially invasive, Schleider said. Instead, the AAP is putting more emphasis on the structural responsibility of companies and society, Schleider said. Their statement recommends regulations that limit overt, sexualized, commercialised, or harmful content to youth, including algorithms that send teens and children down rabbit holes with damaging themes.
My mother and late father sold vintage and secondhand items on auction sites for years to supplement their household budget. I taught my father to list online many years ago. I work two jobs and also freelance. I'm unmarried, in my 50s, live a half-hour drive away from the family home, and also commute one hour each way during the week. My 58-year-old brother lives with Mom. He was laid off just before the pandemic
"It's $2.13 an hour plus tips. $7 an hour when you're working the bar. Plus, you don't have to fold napkins and silverware. The job's yours, if you want it." I nodded quickly. "Yes, I do," I said, rising from my seat. The woman interviewing me smiled crookedly, told me to wear all black, and said I could start on Tuesday.
Getting older has its pluses, at least compared to the alternative, as many people like to say. However, there are also some considerable challenges that everyone faces in their later years. Your body doesn't always cooperate with your will, and there are times you feel like your memory can confound you by not cooperating either. People's roles change, and they lose family members, friends, and partners.
Six months ago, I found myself sitting in a coffee shop, supposedly working on an article, but instead I was switching between seven different apps, responding to notifications, and feeling my chest tighten with each ping. My heart was racing, my breathing was shallow, and I realized I couldn't remember the last time I'd gone more than five minutes without checking my phone. That's when it hit me: the device that was supposed to make my life easier had become my biggest source of stress.
When my D1 college football career ended, I didn't just lose the game. I lost my identity. Football had structured my entire life: my schedule, my body, my purpose. When that structure disappeared, I didn't know who I was anymore. I had been living what I now recognize as a lukewarm lifestyle, doing just enough to get by, but not anchored in anything solid. Without football, there was nothing left to lean on.
If a world without work is paradise, why are its architects still working? Our ability to create has exploded, but our ability to feel meaning in what we create has collapsed. Billionaires tell us AI will free us from work, but they still show up to the office. That's the clue we're ignoring. The danger isn't job loss, it's loss of purpose. As friction disappears, so does the proof that our actions matter. And without those tiny moments of impact, we don't become liberated.
Recently I was completing a global project for a major fashion brand, which focused on the use of social media by young influencers between 16 and 24. I was short a few interviews, so in a crunch, put my own three Gen Z children in front of the camera. What I heard disturbed me, both as an agency CSO, and even more, as a parent.
Being a target of negative experiences by one's peers has consistently been related to decreased self-worth, poor engagement in school, and worse grades among children and adolescents. One of the most consistent of these consequences is depressive symptoms. Put simply, kids' mental health is strongly impacted by being picked on by their classmates at school. Our recently published study examined data from over 100,000 Brazilian adolescents to disentangle how pernicious the effect of being victimized was on reports of symptoms of depression.
So, you've finally done it. No more putting it off, pushing through the grind, waiting for a more opportune time once things settle down. Alas, you've mustered up the gall to cash in on your paid vacation time. Now you have several days strung together to travel, rest, or do whatever the heck your heart desires. I love that for you.
Give your tormentors so much sweetness that they develop diabetes. To a girl in her early teens, that sounded like nonsense. I was the centre of the universe. Surely, no one had ever been as badly treated as I was! And here my father was, telling me to be nice to them? I would ask: Is this some turn-the-other-cheek rubbish? My father has quite a distinctive cackle, and I heard it in those moments.
In childhood, we lack the emotional and cognitive maturity to fully understand the harm that comes from those we depend on for safety and love. To cope with fear, helplessness, and confusion, many of us blamed ourselves. This self-blame can create a false sense of control in a chaotic environment and allows us to preserve an emotional bond with caregivers, even if those caregivers are also the source of harm.
Breaking down the walls of denial in my DID system of parts has been anything but easy, but it has been necessary to thrive. I was sitting across the table from my closest friend from graduate school as we co-worked. She is also a mob daughter, but from a different lineage. We were discussing how only now, in 2026, am I fully grasping who my father actually was, despite beginning trauma-informed therapy in 2012 and spending a life savings to survive, understand, and heal.
The term trigger originated in work with war veterans and combat-related trauma. Long before PTSD was formally recognized as a diagnosis, clinicians observed that soldiers returning from war could experience intense, involuntary reactions to stimuli that resembled aspects of combat. Loud noises, backfiring cars, helicopters, certain smells, or sudden movements could instantaneously activate the nervous system into survival mode. The word was intentionally literal: Just as pulling a gun's trigger leads to immediate discharge, trauma-related triggers caused an automatic physiological response without conscious choice.
