May 4, 2026
Burnout Is Not About Overwork — It's About Unread Signals
Burnout isn't caused by working too many hours. It's caused by ignoring what the emotional signal system is trying to say, for long enough that the system degrades.
Articles
Thinking about
what we feel.
Essays at the crossroads of neuroscience, philosophy, and the honest inquiry into inner life.
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May 4, 2026
What Seven Years in Japan Taught Me About Emotions the West Can't See
The Japanese concepts of tatemae and honne reveal a truth about emotional authenticity that Western self-help keeps missing. Seven years of daily life in Japan changed how I read my own interior.
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May 4, 2026
The Difference Between Feeling and Understanding What You Feel
Having an emotion and reading it are two different cognitive operations. The gap between them is where most emotional confusion lives — and where the most interesting work happens.
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May 4, 2026
Why Sadness Is Sometimes Smarter Than Happiness
Against the positive psychology industry: sadness is not a bug. It is a precision signal that forced happiness actively suppresses.
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April 28, 2026
Spinoza Understood Emotions Better Than Most Therapists
Spinoza's Ethics, read through the lens of conatus — the striving to persist — offers a theory of emotion more coherent than most contemporary therapeutic frameworks.
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April 28, 2026
The Predictive Brain: Why Your Anxiety Is Always About the Future, Not the Present
Anxiety isn't irrational — it's an unupdated prediction. Karl Friston's free energy principle explains why your brain is always living slightly ahead of the moment.
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April 21, 2026
Lisa Feldman Barrett Changed How We Think About Emotions — Here's What Comes Next
Barrett's constructed emotion theory dismantled the idea of universal, hardwired feelings. What it leaves open is more interesting than what it settled.
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April 21, 2026
What Damasio Got Right That Self-Help Forgot
Antonio Damasio's Descartes' Error overturned the assumption that reason is purer without emotion. Thirty years later, self-help culture still hasn't absorbed the implication.
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April 14, 2026
Why 'Managing' Your Emotions Might Be the Wrong Goal
The emotional regulation industry — CBT apps, mindfulness retreats, breathwork protocols — promises control. But controlling a signal is not the same as reading it.
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April 7, 2026
Your Emotions Aren't Lying to You — You Just Haven't Learned Their Language
Emotions aren't irrational — they're predictions from a biological system that need updating, not suppressing. Karl Friston's free energy principle reframes everything.
These essays are fragments of a longer argument — developed fully in the book.