🔥 The Setup: When Your Tribe Becomes Your Trap The fire station smelled like diesel fuel and old coffee. Mark sat across from me in my office and kept his hands on his knees like he was bracing for impact. […]
Anxiety - Authenticity - Friendships - Identity - In the Therapy Room - Sophia Rivera
In the Therapy Room: When a Friendship Becomes Toxic
You’re not a bad person for wanting to hurt him back. You’re just a person whose emotional system is trying to solve a problem it doesn’t have the right tools for.
Emotional Bytes Theory - Friendships - In the Therapy Room - Melanie Doss
In the Therapy Room: When Apology Gifts Feel Like Emotional Hostage Situations
Tessa arrived in my office carrying an invisible weight I recognized immediately—that specific hypervigilance that comes from having your trust demolished and then being asked to trust again. She was seventeen, recently relocated, and caught in that particular teenage purgatory […]
Anxiety - In the Therapy Room - Intimacy - Marriage - Relationships - Sex and Intimacy - Sophia Rivera
In the Therapy Room: Asymmetrical Desire
The Intimacy Paradox 💔 Trevor sat across from me, hands fidgeting with the edge of his jacket. The weight of two decades of marriage seemed to hang from his shoulders. “It’s not that I don’t love her,” he said, his […]
In the Therapy Room - Jas Mendola - Work - Workplaces
In the Therapy Room: Workplace Surveillance and the Erosion of Trust
📹 The Invisible Invasion The recording device sat on the desk, a small black rectangle with a red light that blinked like a mechanical heart. Around the table sat four men and two women, all staring at it with expressions […]
Dating - Friendships - In the Therapy Room - Melanie Doss
In the Therapy Room: The Special Treatment Delusion and the Complexity of Opposite-Sex Friendships
Trevor’s Dilemma 💭 Trevor came into my office with the haunted look of someone who’d spent too many nights parsing text message timestamps like ancient hieroglyphics. Twenty-six years old, personal growth journey completed ✨, therapist-approved self-improvement badges earned, and now […]
Identity - Jas Mendola - Personal Development
Therapy Confessions: The Invisible Tax on Good Men
The weathered man sat at the craps table, whiskey in one hand and chips in the other. You could see it in the lines around his eyes, the way his shoulders hunched forward slightly, as if carrying an invisible weight. […]
Relationships - Sophia Rivera
Therapy Confessions: Supporting a Struggling Partner Without Losing Yourself
🎒 The Unspoken Contract That Never Was During our third session, Ethan finally revealed something he hadn’t told anyone. “I have a growing fear that I’ve committed to someone who might never pull her weight.” This confession revealed what I […]