Agency vs. Helplessness in Climate Change and Other Big Troubles

It isn’t neurotic at all to be concerned about climate change, or the loss of the natural world, or the rapid erosion of public institutions that used to guarantee a basic standard of political stability. In fact, being concerned about these huge trends is an important part of living together in the real world, and a therapeutic culture of atomized individualism can prevent the public from getting together to improve things. Yet this, too, is a delicate balance to be struck and maintained, because we don’t pay our therapists to sway us into their favorite world-saving projects. Treatment should remain focused on the patient’s individual well-being, and include bigger public issues only insofar as the patient is already struggling with them.

Depression, Happiness, climate changeJamey HechtAugust 30, 2025climate change, anxiety, depression, coaching

Work, Overwork, and the Need to Belong

People have an evolved need to be part of something – to belong to a family that belongs to a tribe. Anyone who doesn’t have that can become susceptible to whatever offers itself as a substitute, even if the eventual price of belonging is unclear at the outset, and turns out to be too high. We are a profoundly social species, and the more isolated somebody is, the greater their risk for getting absorbed into a company that has cult-like features—especially if these only become obvious after some time has passed, and ties have been formed.

Marriage and Freedom

Some of the most consequential and wise uses of freedom are inward shifts that can bring to bloom enormous changes in due course. Among the best of these is the free decision to open the faucet in your chest from which love can flow when you dare to allow it. For those whose marriages are dormant but good enough, and potentially very good indeed, it’s well to take a leaf from Homer’s Odyssey and reflect: you may find yourself sometimes fantasizing about Circe and Calypso, and that’s fine. But Penelope is the truth.

Relationships, Men, Marriage, Indifelity, HappinessJamey HechtJune 27, 2024marriage, infidelity, freedom

Chasing Status to Avoid Love

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s great American novel The Great Gatsby, a self-made millionaire aspires to win the heart of a woman he once loved. Daisy is married and unavailable, but Gatsby has idealized her for years. He knows that she appreciates the outward signs of wealth, fame, and power—things that confer status—so he reinvents himself as a wealthy tycoon, hoping this will impress her enough to make her value him. But if it all works out, and Daisy is won over by glitz and bling, how will he know she really loves him? Gatsby is a man, not a Rolls Royce or a bank account.

Relationships, relentless hope, Work, Sexuality, Men, Marriage, Happiness, freedom, Dating, AddictionJamey HechtApril 16, 2024status, love, loneliness

Masochism: The Need for Punishment

Kink is not to be pathologized, and people who enjoy it don’t have to fear that therapy will take their kinks away. But kink should be fully voluntary, an informed and deliberate selection among the options for a healthy sex life. Your submissiveness or sexual masochism might be an unchosen temperament that you discover inside yourself, but the erotic exercise of it ought to be a free choice.

Dating, freedom, Happiness, Relationships, Self Esteem, SexualityJamey HechtApril 10, 2024kink, masochism, sadomasochism, punishment

You are all the ages you've ever been.

Whatever your age, you are also all the ages you’ve been before. Part of your psyche is an infant, because past selves remain as parts of an increasingly complex self-system. Younger parts of self, with unhealed wounds and unmet needs, can interfere with adult life, until they get the necessary loving care from the most adult parts of self. Now, without an awareness that the self has parts, we are likely to feel crazy the moment our feelings do not agree with one another. I want to eat the cake, but I also want to be in a caloric deficit. I want to keep playing in the snow, but I also want to go inside and warm up. Knowing it's impossible to do both, I might well feel crazy whenever a pair of incompatible desires assails me.

Child Rearing, Depression, Happiness, Self Esteem, TraumaJamey HechtAugust 20, 2021Freud, inner child

Blog (by JH, no AI)