🧠 When Other People’s Opinions Become Your Inner Voice Emily carried her overheated puppy home through Manhattan’s concrete inferno last summer. Three days later, she sat in my office, still shaken by a stranger who’d verbally accosted her for it. […]
Lola Adams
Therapy Confessions: The Emotional Affairs Hidden in Everyday Rituals
I still remember the day Emily sat down in my office, her perfectly manicured nails drumming against the ceramic mug of green tea I’d offered. She was the picture of Upper East Side composure—Cartier watch, understated diamond studs, cashmere that […]
Sophia Rivera
Therapy Confessions: Friendship Breakups and Shame Spirals
💔 The Emotional Mathematics of Friendship Loss Let me tell you about the emotional mathematics of friendship breakups: they hit with approximately 3.7 times the force of romantic ones, yet receive about 0.02% of the cultural sympathy. Everyone prepares you […]
Sophia Rivera
Therapy Confessions: Red Flags in Relationships
🚩 When Trust Is Already on Life Support I once watched a woman spend forty-five minutes trying to convince herself that the stop sign she just drove through wasn’t actually red. “Maybe it was more of an orange-ish color,” she […]
Jas Mendola
Therapy Confessions: The Competence Paradox and Emotional Invalidation in Relationships
She sat across from me, knuckles white, jaw clenched. Tears threatened but did not fall. I had seen this look before on the battlefield, in the boardroom, in the mirror. The look of someone betrayed but trying desperately to maintain […]
Jas Mendola
Therapy Confessions: When Caretaking Becomes Currency in Relationships
She was ill. She was in pain. And she still felt responsible for him. Her boyfriend’s face had gone from concern to desire to anger in the space of minutes, leaving her alone in her sickness, curled around a kidney […]
Melanie Doss
Therapy Confessions: Digital Dad Syndrome
Alexandra showed up to our first session in mismatched socks. Not the cute, intentional kind – proper disaster-level pairing: one ankle-length black, one knee-high with cartoon vegetables. She didn’t notice until forty minutes in when she crossed her legs. Instead […]
Sophia Rivera
Therapy Confessions: The Invisible Structures of Family Estrangement
🔍 The Grief That Wasn’t Allowed I once watched a woman at a restaurant trying to cut her steak with a spoon. For fifteen minutes, she sawed away at the filet with this ridiculous utensil while a perfectly good knife […]
Lola Adams
Therapy Confessions: Institutional Indifference vs Personal Betrayal
It was 8:45 on a Tuesday morning when Emily walked into my office clutching a coffee cup like it might save her life. Her knuckles were white against the cardboard, her eyes hollow with the particular brand of betrayal that […]
Lola Adams
Therapy Confessions: The Transparency Tax
The Upper East Side coffee shops all start to blend together after a decade in this business. But I still remember Emily perched awkwardly on the leather armchair at Café Evergreen, her espresso untouched, as she unspooled a story that’s […]