October special “Spooky Psychology”, Part 3/3: How my therapist sent me to a psychic, what cold reading and the Barnum effect explain - and what the visit showed me about making decisions.

October special “Spooky Psychology”, Part 2/3: Understanding where a pattern comes from is one thing - changing it is another. Why rituals, from cord cutting to inner child work, can reach where insight alone falls short - and where scepticism is wise.

October special “Spooky Psychology”, Part 1/3: Why does this keep happening to me? Four gears behind repeating patterns, a detour to the Norse threads of fate - and how to step out of the repetition trap.

"I'm a wrinkly old prune" - sentences like this shape you.
What a lemon has to do with it, and how to make your self-talk more helpful.

You see what's happening - but you can't get through.
Why "just leave" doesn't help, what works instead, and where your own boundaries are allowed to be.

Is it gaslighting if they believe it? Signs and common phrases, what gaslighting is not, why reflective people are especially vulnerable - and first steps to trust your own perception again.

Why is misophonia often worse with family? How to set boundaries without apologizing, tolerate the displeasure that follows - and calm your nervous system so every sound stops feeling like a threat.

Why do chewing sounds make you so angry? What misophonia is, how it differs from hyperacusis and sound sensitivity - and why the story behind the sound matters as much as the sound itself.

Migraine isn’t just bad luck. It’s often the loud end of a long chain of quiet compromises - about biology, stress, swallowed anger and what saying no has to do with headaches.

Disney taught us that love means playing the right role. Why some partners go emotionally unavailable, others fall into people pleasing - and what changes when we stop the silent treatment and let our inner dragons speak.

Words matter more than we think: a single verb can change what witnesses remember, and a forgotten errand can turn into a fight about worth. How language shapes memory and emotion - and how to use it with care.

Punks wear masks too - just different ones. What social masking, conformity and a first time singing on stage reveal about belonging, and how to tell when a mask no longer fits.

The black sheep of the family is often its most sensitive early warning system. Why scapegoats feel the dysfunction first - and why resilience sometimes means knowing when to stop.

What is a flow state - and why can’t you force it? Flow is a joyful, measurable state that grows when we practice letting go. Joy is the engine that makes the work possible.

Some things sound more mystical than they are. What we call ritual or belief often runs on the same biological circuitry as psychotherapy. A woman believed she had been cursed. Her nervous system agreed - a textbook nocebo effect. What lifted it was a story her body could finally trust.

Burnout grows in systems that overload people - and some pay twice: neurodivergent people, sensitive people, anyone who masks. What autistic burnout is, how boreout differs, and what actually protects.

Your gut feeling is still there - stress, shame and social conditioning just drown out what your body already knows. How gut and brain talk via the vagus nerve, how to tell intuition from anxiety, and how to clear the line again.