Top Stories
Stories in Psyche that you'll love, handpicked by our team.
Whose shoes, exactly?. Top Story - September 2026.
We are often told that putting ourselves in another person’s shoes is a virtue. And it certainly can be, when it means trying to consider what the experience might be like for another human being, rather than looking at a situation exclusively from our own side. But “put yourself in their shoes” can also be one of the most unhelpful pieces of advice in at least two ways.
By Eva Smitte9 days ago in Psyche
Disconnection And Death. Top Story - August 2026.
Written by a human, for humans, always. What does it mean to be human? It is a fascinating question that has been asked by all forms of people since at least the beginning of records we can find.
By H.E. Dr. Cody Dakota Wooten, COIE, DFM, DHM26 days ago in Psyche
Beyond the White Water. Top Story - August 2026.
When I was a teenager, the ocean pummeled me. I was surfing when the fin of my board sliced through my chest. I came out of the water a bloody mess, and somewhere inside of me, the ocean stopped being a place of freedom.
By Brooke Gallagher30 days ago in Psyche
Admitting I am Wrong. Top Story - July 2026.
I question everything. I hate being wrong, and I can admit it even when I don't want to, reluctantly that is . I'm not a bad person, though I can be persistent when I think I am right about something. Eventually, I will admit that I am wrong, but I can be very stubborn and over-analytical.
By Carol Ann Townend2 months ago in Psyche
You are but a lotus flower preparing to bloom. . Top Story - July 2026.
Think of a sacred flower symbol, and the lotus inevitably comes to mind. Our very own energy centres, also called chakras - those invisible-to-the-naked-eye vortexes said to connect our physical body with our subtle bodies and channel our life force, are described in many esoteric traditions as resembling lotus flowers to those with clairvoyant or extrasensory perception. The higher the chakra, the more petals the flower is said to have.
By Eva Smitte2 months ago in Psyche
No One Keeps Score Like I Do. Top Story - July 2026.
Schizotypal personality disorder can make relationships difficult in ways that are easy to flatten into a list of symptoms. It involves severe social anxiety and mistrust, along with a tendency to find unusual meaning in ordinary interactions or withdraw from people you genuinely love. Affection doesn’t make any of that disappear, unfortunately. If anything, the more someone matters, the more room there is for fear to interfere. Closeness raises the stakes, which is rarely when my thinking becomes more reasonable. The ugly truth is that I’m not the only victim of what this stupid disorder does to relationships. Loving me has cost other people things too. I’ve disappeared when someone needed me, then returned with an explanation as though understanding why I did it could make the absence hurt less. Depression could leave me unable to answer even the people I missed. Paranoia could make me find hostility in something ordinary and lash out at someone for something they hadn’t actually done. I’ve kept pushing after the warmth had already gone out of a conversation because I was too convinced by my own reading of it to notice that the other person was no longer comfortable. Sometimes I only recognised the change in their tone after I had already made them regret being open with me. Whatever made sense inside my head was invisible to them. They only knew how I made them feel. I left people believing they hadn’t mattered enough for me to treat them better. I know what that does to a person because I still carry it from the people who did it to me. I hate knowing that someone else carries me in the same place. I hate that I’ve become the kind of person I’m still trying to recover from. Some losses stay with me because I know exactly where I failed. I treated someone’s affection like something I could damage without losing. I kept assuming there would be another conversation and another chance to show them that I cared more than my behaviour suggested. I didn’t realise I was using up those chances while I waited. I was sorry - I still am. But by the time I found the words, they no longer trusted me with them. That is the point where schizotypal thinking starts turning regret into its own private theory of cause and effect. I start believing that the people who hurt me aren’t simply making choices of their own, but somehow delivering the punishment I earned by hurting someone else first. Every loss seems connected to an old failure, and cruel endings begin to feel too precise to be accidental. I know how easily I assign meaning to things that may not have any, but knowing that doesn’t help much once the pattern feels real. The universe doesn’t need to keep score. I’m perfectly capable of doing it on its behalf. Apparently the word for this is karma, which is awkward for someone who considers the whole idea nonsense. People often seem surprised by that, as though schizotypal disorder should have arrived with a complimentary belief in cosmic bookkeeping. I don’t believe suffering is distributed according to moral merit. If it were, several people from my past should be having a considerably worse time. My principles become strangely flexible when the subject is me, though. Karma is ridiculous right up until something painful happens and I can point to it as proof that I had it coming. The practical result is that I start building a case against myself. I go through old mistakes until I find one serious enough to explain why this person got to hurt me. There is always something I regret, which makes the process horribly easy. Their choices slowly disappear from the story, while everything I’ve ever done wrong becomes relevant. In the end, I can make almost anyone innocent if I hate myself carefully enough.
By Suzanne B.2 months ago in Psyche
How To Cope With Long-Term Unemployment & Underemployment Without Losing Yourself. Top Story - July 2026.
Needless to say, the current economy does not really give two f*cks as to whether or not you have secure employment right now. And it has absolutely nothing to do with your skills, knowledge, experience, work ethic, references, attitude, and qualifications. Your CV can be polished many times over, and it does not keep you immune from being told that you are overqualified one minute, underqualified the next. And you can easily spend one hour on one tailored cover letter not knowing if its going to be read by a human being on the other side. Not a complaint, rather an observation.
By Justine Crowley2 months ago in Psyche
Grieving Independence. Top Story - July 2026.
Until it happens to you, you don’t often get to hear about the quiet but unending grief and anger at what you could once do. When we picture getting older, we usually imagine being able to slowly no longer do what we want, what we love, and what we need to do to function as a human being. We never picture what often actually happens which is a very sudden and abrupt loss of what we were once able to do.
By Shiloh Madison2 months ago in Psyche
