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Somatic Marker Hypothesis

The Body Speaks Long Before the Mind Can Explain If you have ever walked into a room and felt your stomach tighten before you could explain a single thing, then you have already lived inside the Somatic Marker Hypothesis. This theory, put forward by Antonio Damasio, says your body remembers life in its own language. It speaks through warmth, tightness, dread, ease or that soft little pull inside your chest that says step toward this or step back from it. In plain Southern English, it means this. Your body learned things your mind has not caught up to yet. Every storm you survived and every bit of comfort you received left a mark inside you. These marks become little bookmarks your brain flips back to whenever it needs guidance faster than words can form. What Makes Somatic Markers Work To make this simple and true Your ventromedial prefrontal cortex helps connect your memories to emotion. Your amygdala stamps the emotional weight of what happened. Your insula lets you feel those...
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Toxic Positivity

  When “Staying Positive” Becomes Its Own Kind of Harm I have watched too many good people learn to smile while they were quietly falling apart. Folks who kept showing up, kept doing their part, kept carrying their load, all while feeling unseen in the places that mattered most. Over the years, I have noticed that many well meaning people have been taught that uncomfortable emotions are something to get past as quickly as possible. Sadness, anger, grief, fear, and exhaustion often get treated like potholes in the road. You are supposed to swerve around them, speed up, and act like they were never there. Out of that way of thinking grows what we call toxic positivity. Toxic positivity is the belief that people should stay upbeat and grateful no matter what they are facing, as if a good attitude alone can patch every crack in the pavement. It assumes that if you just think right, feel right, and speak right, the road will smooth itself out. Most of the time, this does not come from...
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Sense of Self

  Understanding Your Sense of Self Your sense of self is your inner understanding of who you are, even when nobody is watching, approving, or agreeing with you. It is the part of you that knows what matters to you, what feels right and wrong, what you can and cannot tolerate, and what you need in order to feel balanced. It is not based on how productive you are, how helpful you are, or how much you please others. It is based on knowing that you matter simply because you exist. When your sense of self is steady, life still brings challenges, disappointments, and stress, but you are better able to handle them without losing your footing. You can accept feedback without feeling attacked. You can say no without drowning in guilt. You can care about others without abandoning yourself. You can make mistakes without deciding that you are a failure. A sense of self begins forming in childhood. In supportive environments, children learn that their feelings matter, their needs are importan...
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Attentional Blink: The Brain’s Split Second Pause

Attentional Blink Your attention is not as steady as you think it is. Even when your eyes stay wide open, your mind sometimes blinks. Not because you are slipping, and not because you missed something on purpose, but because your brain pauses to finish one moment before it lets in the next. Science calls that short pause Attentional Blink. I call it the mind’s way of saying “Give me one second now, I am still sorting the first thing you handed me.” Attentional Blink is the brief moment when your brain completely overlooks something right in front of you because it is still busy processing what came just before. It happens fast enough that most people never notice it. You might hear your name and miss the words immediately afterward. You might catch a strong emotion in someone’s voice and lose the sentence that follows. That is not carelessness. That is the brain doing its honest work. Researchers measure this using rapid serial visual presentation. A line of letters or symbols flashe...
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The Rubber Hand Illusion and How the Brain Rewrites Your Reality

I want you to picture something with me. Imagine sitting at a table, looking down, and watching a fake rubber hand being brushed with a little paintbrush. Then suddenly, your own body reacts to that fake hand as if it truly belongs to you. Your heart jumps. Your breath shifts. And your brain says, “Careful now, that is mine.” That moment right there is where science and lived experience meet. It shows us how easily the mind can claim something that never belonged to you in the first place. That strange experience is called the Rubber Hand Illusion, and it reveals something powerful that most folks never stop to consider. Your sense of being inside your own body is not a fixed truth. It is not carved in stone. It is something your brain builds one moment at a time by weaving together what you see, what you feel, and what you expect. When all three line up, you feel like yourself. When they do not, your brain starts filling in the spaces like a storyteller who refuses to say, “I am not s...
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When Safety Is Uncertain

Insecure Attachment and Machiavellian Traits in Adult Relationships Some people learn early that closeness is risky. Not because they were dramatic. Not because they were broken. But because connection came with strings attached, sudden withdrawals, emotional whiplash, or expectations that shifted without warning. When safety is inconsistent, the nervous system adapts. It always does. Attachment theory, first articulated by John Bowlby , helps explain how early relationships shape our expectations of others. When caregivers are emotionally unavailable, unpredictable, or unsafe, a child does not stop needing connection. Instead, they learn how to manage it carefully, quietly, and with a watchful eye. This is where strategy can begin to replace safety. Insecure attachment as a learning environment Insecure attachment does not mean a lack of attachment. It means attachment formed under conditions where emotional needs were not reliably met. Over time, the child learns that trust is ...
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We Are All Delusional. Well. Not Exactly.

Let’s start with an uncomfortable truth. Every one of us is delusional. We wake up that way, carry it into conversations, bring it to work, and tuck it into our pockets like loose change that gets spent all day long. Now, before anyone panics or starts mentally flipping through diagnostic labels like a nervous shopper in the wrong aisle, let me correct myself properly. We are not delusional. We are engaging in Routine Self Referential Cognitive Narrative Optimization. That phrase alone should lower your blood pressure. It sounds like something discovered in a lab, funded by a grant, and delivered with a PowerPoint that no one fully understood but everyone politely nodded through. What it really means is this. The brain is a full time storyteller with a red pen. It edits the rough drafts of our experiences, trims awkward scenes, reframes motives, and smooths over plot holes so the story of “me” stays coherent enough to function. This is not lying. It is not madness. It is closer to aut...
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