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Psychology, culture, and what's actually going on underneath.

28/11/2025•Culture & Technology

Stranger Things 'Sorcerer': Will Byers and the Wounded Healer

The sensitive kid never gets to be the hero. They feel too much, notice too much, carry everyone's anxiety in their body before a word is spoken...

07/11/2025•Culture & Technology

Pluribus Episodes 1 & 2 Review: What the Show Gets Right About Emotional Avoidance (Spoilers)

There's a new show on Apple TV that accidentally nails something most therapy never addresses: what happens when happiness stops being a feeling and becomes a defence.

01/11/2025•Defences & Patterns

I Don't Know What I Feel

Someone asks how you feel about something that just happened - a breakup, a job loss, your father's cancer diagnosis - and you go blank.

30/10/2025•Culture & Technology

What The Roses Gets Wrong About Couples Therapy

The Roses opens in a couples therapy session. Ivy and Theo Rose are asked to name ten things they love about each other. What the film gets wrong is the therapist's response.

29/10/2025•Defences & Patterns

Therapy Speak Is Ruining Your Relationships

You're not 'setting boundaries.' You're just being difficult. Your ex isn't a narcissist. They were just a bit shit and it didn't work out.

03/09/2025•Therapeutic Process

Why Therapy Isn't Working: The Real Reason You're Still Stuck

You've been in therapy for months, maybe years. You've tried CBT, had some EMDR, maybe even found a therapist who 'gets' you. But something still isn't shifting.

29/08/2025•Culture & Technology

The Performance Trap

The exhausting performance of being 'easy to talk to' and how it cuts us off from the very connection we're desperate for.

21/08/2025•Therapeutic Process

Croydon Talking Therapies: Understanding What's Actually on Offer

Your GP mentioned "talking therapies" and handed you a leaflet. The NHS website has reassuring language about "evidence-based psychological therapies....

15/08/2025•Therapeutic Process

The Great CBT Experiment: How We Turned Mental Health Into a Production Line

Since 2008, the NHS has treated over a million people annually through IAPT (Improving Access to Psychological Therapies). It's been called a "world-b...

09/08/2025•Culture & Technology

We've Turned Discomfort Into a Design Problem

Most of our 'dopamine problems' aren't neurological. They're what happens when we've engineered every moment of potential discomfort out of existence.

02/08/2025•Culture & Technology

The Machines Aren’t Coming For Us

The real AI takeover won't need robot armies. We're not being conquered. We're volunteering. Someone's asking ChatGPT how to respond to their grieving friend...

09/05/2025•Defences & Patterns

The Fortress You Built to Protect Yourself is Your Prison

We don't build walls to keep people out. We build them to keep ourselves in. That's the truth about emotional protection.

14/04/2025•Human Experience

Why a Square? The Meaning Behind the New Logo

You might notice things look a little different around here. The new logo on my website is subtle. Just the words "Talk to Luke" and a simple square....

31/03/2025•Therapeutic Process

Therapy Isn't About Fixing You. It's About Understanding You

You've been trying to fix yourself for years. Maybe decades. You've read the books, tried the apps, implemented the morning routines. And you're exhausted.

12/03/2025•Culture & Technology

The Severance of Therapy

In Severance, workers undergo surgery to split their consciousness. It's meant as dystopian horror, but it captures something true about therapy: the peculiar separation that makes the work possible.

13/12/2024•Human Experience

What Borderline Personality Disorder Actually Feels Like

Someone you've been dating for three weeks doesn't text back for two hours and your brain goes: 'They hate me and I'm going to die alone.' That's Tuesday morning with BPD.

28/11/2024•Culture & Technology

You Don't Need Better Mental Health

Mental health has become another performance. Another thing to optimise, track, and improve. But maybe what you actually need is the capacity to stop coping so hard all the time.

06/11/2024•Human Experience

Therapy in English for Expats in Dubai: When Success Feels Like Suffocation

You moved to Dubai for the money. Let's be honest about that. The tax-free salary, the luxury lifestyle. It all made perfect sense on paper. So why does everything feel so empty?

15/09/2024•Defences & Patterns

When Your Childhood Won't Let You Heal

Sometimes the problem is that a part of you is still eight years old, waiting for someone to notice you're drowning.

07/02/2024•Human Experience

Therapy in English for Expats in Berlin: When Freedom Becomes Its Own Prison

You left to escape something. Berlin promised you could finally breathe. That you could reinvent yourself completely. So why do you feel more trapped than ever?

24/10/2023•Human Experience

Leadership and Mental Health: Why Leaders Struggle in Silence

You're drowning, but everyone else is looking to you for a life raft. That's the particular hell of leadership when your mental health is falling apart.

06/09/2023•Human Experience

Therapy in English for Expats in Tokyo: When Success Feels Empty

You moved to Tokyo with purpose. Career opportunity, adventure, escape. The move made sense. So why does everything feel so bloody hard?

09/04/2023•Therapeutic Process

Rewriting the Code: How Psychodynamic Therapy Helps Us Understand Our Early Programming

You've been living someone else's script and calling it your personality. These aren't character traits. They're survival strategies you developed before you could even speak.

10/01/2023•Therapeutic Process

The Limits of Short-Term Therapy: Why 8 Sessions Often Isn't Enough

You've probably been there. Six sessions in, just starting to trust your therapist, and they're already talking about "endings" and "consolidating you...

24/12/2022•Human Experience

Your Misery Is Ruining Christmas

Christmas isn't hard because of money or grief or loneliness - though all of those are real. Christmas is hard because other people need you to be hap...

22/12/2022•Therapeutic Process

Online Therapy for Expats: When Your Entire Identity Gets Lost in Translation

Moving abroad doesn't just change your postcode - it demolishes everything you thought you knew about yourself. The Identity Crisis No One Warns You ...

23/01/2020•Therapeutic Process

What Psychodynamic Therapy Actually Does: Beyond Surface Solutions

You've done CBT three times. You've got a drawer full of anxiety worksheets. And you're still stuck in the same patterns. That's because the problem was never your thoughts.

08/09/2017•Therapeutic Process

I Need Counselling; Should I Go Private?

You're asking the wrong question. The question isn't whether you should go private. The question is whether you can afford to keep waiting for a syste...