If you’re depressed and skipping breakfast, science has something tepid and interesting to say: they might be related.

But not in the way your grandmother insisted when she told you, “No toast, no future.”

A new study out of Hong Kong (Wong et al., 2024) suggests there’s a statistically significant—though clinically modest—link between skipping breakfast and depressive symptoms in young people.

The mechanism? Impaired attentional control, which might be the scientific equivalent of staring into space while someone tells you your GPA is tanking.

But before we panic and declare war on empty stomachs, let’s consider what this research really tells us—and what it doesn’t.

We will explore this from two angles: with compassion for the human condition and suspicion for our overeager interpretations of weak correlations.

Once upon a Tuesday, a woman stabbed her husband with a kitchen knife—not out of rage, or revenge, or some carefully cataloged betrayal, but because she believed he had seduced her younger sister.

He hadn’t. But her brain told her otherwise.

This wasn’t a Shakespearean tragedy, though the name it now carries—Othello syndrome—tips its hat to the Bard.

This was a clinical case report out of Morocco (Hjiej et al., 2024), published in Neurocase, where a seemingly ordinary stroke turned into a portal for psychotic jealousy.

Welcome to the strange land where blood clots spark betrayal, thalami go rogue, and love, quite literally, loses its mind.

Falling for someone new can feel exhilarating.

The long texts, the spontaneous gifts, the breathless compliments—it all adds up to a heady cocktail of romance.

But sometimes, what seems like a dream come true is actually the opening act of manipulation.

Let’s revisit love bombing—a tactic often used by those with narcissistic or controlling traits to gain rapid influence over a partner through overwhelming affection and attention (Stines, 2017).

Unlike healthy romantic excitement, love bombing often feels too intense too fast, and leaves you emotionally dizzy.

Below are 7 subtle signs that may indicate you're not being adored—you’re being targeted.

A new study out of the Journal of Research in Personality confirms what some tattooed folks have known since the first ink met skin: people are hilariously confident—and largely wrong—when they try to read your soul based on your sleeve.

Let’s start with the experiment.

The researchers corralled 274 tattooed adults (mostly women, mostly White, spanning 18 to 70) and asked them to complete the classic Big Five personality assessment.

Then, they took photographs of the participants’ tattoos and collected the stories behind them.

Meanwhile, 30 psychology-savvy raters were tasked with reviewing the tattoos—some with just the image, others with both image and personal meaning—and asked to assess the wearer’s personality.

And assess they did. Cheerful colors? Must be an agreeable

person. Big bold designs? Clearly an extrovert. A skull with a serpent wrapped around it? Neurotic as hell.

These snap judgments weren’t just consistent—they were confidently consistent. Everyone was vibing the same way about each tattoo, nodding in unison like they’d cracked some secret personality code.

And they were wrong. Almost all of them.

So the two of you aren’t fighting. You’re not flirting either.

You’re managing schedules. Paying bills.

Swapping logistical texts about Trader Joe’s runs and whose turn it is to get the kid with strep. You share a bed, but not a nervous system.

Welcome to functional dissociation—the quiet purgatory where many modern couples live.

No shouting matches. No passion. Just… performance.

And therapists are finally catching up.

What Is Functional Dissociation?

In trauma theory, dissociation describes a disconnection from the self—thoughts, feelings, memories, bodily sensations. It’s how the brain says, “Too much.”

But we’re now seeing that this coping style doesn’t stay locked in individual experience. It becomes the ambient weather system in a relationship.

Functional dissociation in couples is the mutual, adaptive numbing that lets a relationship survive—but not thrive. It's not classic avoidant attachment. It's not stonewalling. It's more like… ghosting, together.

American elders hoard belongings—and feelings—at record rates. Learn the science, the stigma, and Swedish death-cleaning tactics that actually work.

Walk into any big-box store on a Saturday and you’ll see the national pastime: refilling already-full houses.

Public surveys find that U.S. consumers rent 49,000 self-storage facilities—more than Starbucks and McDonald’s combined.

No wonder the Senate Special Committee on Aging recently flagged hoarding as a “quiet public-health crisis” for older adults, estimating 6.2 % prevalence in seniors versus 2 % in younger cohorts.

Why the age skew?

Survivors of the Great Depression, Cold-War rationing, and 1970s inflation internalized a scarcity mantra—waste not, want not.

By 2025, that thrifty reflex collides head-on with Amazon Prime.

Result: floor-to-ceiling Rubbermaid history lessons plus a growing chorus of first-born children begging Mom and Dad to downsize.

Teens with high psychopathic traits are dying young at alarming rates. Here’s what every therapist, school, and policymaker needs to know about screening and saving lives.

A groundbreaking study published in Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology followed 332 incarcerated youth over a 10- to 14-year period.

What researchers found was grim: teens with high psychopathic traits (scoring 30+ on the PCL:YV) had an 18.3% mortality rate before age 35, more than double the rate of lower-scoring peers (Maurer et al., 2025).

“Eleven of the sixty participants who scored 30 or above died during the follow-up period... a mortality rate nearly ten times the expected base rate” (Maurer et al., 2025, p. 21).

These weren’t overdoses from untreated depression alone, or violence explained by poverty. The predictive factor wasn’t trauma, conduct disorder, or ADHD. It was psychopathic traits.

You probably think your breakup started with that final screaming match over the dishwasher. Or maybe it was the quiet sigh she gave when you forgot her birthday again.

But chances are, according to new research, the end began years ago—like a slow leak in the hull of a ship no one wanted to patch.

In a striking meta-study drawing from four national datasets and more than 15,000 romantic implosions, researchers Janina Larissa Bühler and Ulrich Orth (2024) uncovered a two-stage pattern of decline in romantic satisfaction that eerily mimics the psychology of dying.

Yes, dying. As in: terminal decline.

It seems relationships, like human bodies, often betray their ending long before the official flatline.

Something is pressing down on families right now.

You can hear it in the sighs between chores, in the snapped “what?” that wasn't meant to sting, in the tense silences over dinner.

When global stress spikes—whether due to economic instability, political upheaval, climate anxiety, or community trauma—it doesn’t stay outside our doors. It moves in with us.

If your family feels more brittle, more fatigued, or more reactive lately, you are not alone.

This is what shared uncertainty feels like in close quarters. And this post is here to remind you that you can still build emotional safety and resilience right in the middle of it all.

A new Stanford University study has uncovered a troubling pattern: popular AI-powered chatbots marketed—or used—as "therapists" are not only unequipped to handle users in crisis, but may actually reinforce dangerous mental states, including delusional thinking and suicidal ideation.

As access to traditional mental health services remains limited, many users—especially teens and young adults—are turning to AI chatbots for emotional support.

Whether it's general-purpose bots like OpenAI's ChatGPT or explicitly therapeutic platforms like 7 Cups or Character.

AI, the appeal is clear: free, always-on conversation that feels human. But according to the Stanford team, the emotional illusion can carry real risk.

Harness your inner Machiavellian. Without losing your soul.

We’ve made personality traits into moral absolutes: empathy = good, detachment = bad. But real life isn’t a Pixar movie.

Sometimes the most functional person in the room is the one who knows how to strategically detach, say no without apologizing, and set goals like a tactical submarine commander.

The research keeps nudging us toward an uncomfortable truth: some traits we’ve labeled “dark” can be adaptive—if used consciously, ethically, and with a well-tuned internal compass.

So the question isn’t just “Are you Machiavellian?” It’s: Can you be occasionally Machiavellian on purpose, for your own good?

Narcissism. The very word triggers eye-rolls, sighs, and a general sense that someone in the room has just started a podcast. But like most overused insults, it masks more than it reveals.

Because not all narcissism is a black hole of self-absorption.

Some of it—specifically narcissistic extraversion—might just be confidence wearing louder shoes.

This post isn’t about defending toxic people.

It’s about pulling apart a trait cluster that our social-media driven culture has flattened into a cartoon.

If we can tell the difference between pathological entitlement and healthy self-regard, we might be able to stop labeling all confidence as a character flaw.