Relationship Insights

personal growth

Reader's Letter

It didn’t happen overnight. There wasn’t a big fight, no door slamming, no clearly spoken-out cheating that suddenly made it obvious something was wrong. Instead, something slowly wore away. At first, he just touched me less often. Then his gaze stopped lingering on me, too. Now we’re at the point where we have sex once a month—if you can even call it that.

Meditation: the best antidote to overthinking and anxiety

Meditation is scientifically proven to increase our sense of well-being by creating structural changes in the brain, lowering stress hormone levels, and improving emotional regulation. Overthinking—what psychology calls rumination—does almost the exact opposite. Rumination means endlessly chewing on negative thoughts, and it, too, can cause structural changes in the brain. It raises stress hormone levels and pulls us into a negative emotional state. In other words, both meditation and overthinking shape the brain—just in completely different directions.

Reader’s Letter

“I’m in one of those on-again, off-again relationships I just can’t seem to put down. I know I’m only getting crumbs of affection. There’s no need to explain it to me, no need to open my eyes, I don’t need an outside perspective to see what’s going on. I see the situation clearly from the inside—and sometimes even from the outside, as if it weren’t happening to me at all, like I’m just watching myself go back again. Once again, I’m waiting for a message, a half-sentence, a reaction, some tiny sign I could read into and tell myself that maybe I matter after all.