How Long Does Hypnotherapy Take?

One of the most common questions I'm asked about hypnotherapy is: "How many sessions will I need?" It's a reasonable question. But it's also complicated by some unusual expectations surrounding hypnosis. People rarely expect psychotherapy, physical rehabilitation,...

How Should Who Manage Whom to Do What?

It is an awkward question. Deliberately so. How should who manage whom to do what? Buried inside that slightly tortured sentence are some of the oldest questions human beings have ever tried to answer. Who should be allowed to tell someone else what to do? Under what...

The Disappearance of the Singular Experience

In The Shock of the New, art critic Robert Hughes described the enormous perceptual disruption that accompanied modern life. Industrialization, mechanized transportation, photography, cinema, advertising, mass communication and the modern city didn’t merely change...

Mindfulness Beyond the Clichés

Ask someone what mindfulness looks like and a generic image appears almost instantly: A person sitting cross-legged in perfect lotus position, eyes closed, face radiating a kind of serene detachment. Social media hasn’t helped. Scroll through Instagram and you’ll find...

How Do You Respond to a Future That Hasn’t Happened?

Think of something you're genuinely looking forward to. Maybe it’s a vacation, seeing someone you love, finishing a project you've worked on for months, moving into a new home, or finally reaching something you've wanted for a long time. Notice what happens when you...

When Theory Becomes More Real Than Reality

There is a particular kind of intellectual error that becomes more dangerous as the person making it becomes more intelligent. It occurs when a theory grows so persuasive, so comprehensive, and so authoritative that reality is no longer permitted to contradict it....

The Dystopia People Know, and the One They Don’t

Most people today believe they recognize dystopia when they see it. They picture Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four: boots on faces, surveillance, slogans, ministries of truth. The visible machinery of coercion. That image has become the default template for tyranny. What...

Get Out of the Audience

Most people are taught, at some point, to observe their thoughts. It’s presented as a form of awareness. A way to step back from reaction and see more clearly. That part is valid. What’s rarely pointed out is that many people are already observing something else...

Insight Doesn’t Change You

People assume that seeing something clearly will change them, that once an insight lands, behavior will follow. In practice, it usually doesn’t. Sometimes it does. A pattern becomes so obvious that it drops. The reaction fades. The old behavior no longer makes sense....

ADD Names the Pattern But Hides the Training

People describe it as constant distraction. And in many cases, that’s exactly what it feels like. Attention jumps. It refuses to settle. Stillness feels unnatural—sometimes uncomfortable enough that the nervous system wants to escape it. So it gets a name: ADD. ADHD....