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Essayist; writes Astral Codex Ten, previously Slate Star Codex.

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  Adam Kay's This Is Going To Hurt is a textbook case study of moral injury and post-traumatic stress in a competent doctor, narrated by the patient himself.

  Trauma

  Their words

  This Is Going To Hurt is, read with a clinical eye, a textbook case study of moral injury and post-traumatic stress in a competent doctor, narrated by the patient himself, with the diagnosis hidden in plain sight.

  Your Book Review: This Is Going To Hurtastralcodexten.com

Clinical psychologist, EMDR consultant and yoga teacher in Boulder, Colorado. Author of The Complex PTSD Workbook and EMDR Therapy and Somatic Psychology; writes on trauma, attachment and the nervous system.

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  Innovations in Psychotherapy Conference

  Their words

  Honored to be speaking at the 2026 Innovations in Psychotherapy Conference (Nov 10–13 in Anaheim & Online)! Join us for evidence-based education & practical strategies to enhance your practice. Use code SPEAK26 to save $50:

  x.com

Physician focused on longevity; wrote Outlive and hosts The Drive.

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  Vaginal estrogen is a safe, effective and badly underused therapy for postmenopausal women, and it probably saves lives.

  Psychotherapy

  Their words

  For postmenopausal women—and women with premature estrogen deprivation for other reasons—vaginal estrogen is a safe and highly effective therapy to alleviate the genitourinary syndrome of menopause, prevent recurrent UTIs, and likely to save lives.

  peterattiamd.com

Clinical psychologist, EMDR consultant and yoga teacher in Boulder, Colorado. Author of The Complex PTSD Workbook and EMDR Therapy and Somatic Psychology; writes on trauma, attachment and the nervous system.

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  Therapeutic Yoga for Trauma Recovery: A Clinical Summit for Mind-Body Healing

  Their words

  There’s still time to join me for Therapeutic Yoga for Trauma Recovery: A Clinical Summit for Mind-Body Healing!

  x.com

Essayist; writes Astral Codex Ten, previously Slate Star Codex.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  For psychiatric disorders driven by amygdala hyperactivity, elective amygdalectomy should be offered and covered by health insurance instead of lifelong therapy and medication.

  Psychotherapy

  Their words

  If you suffer from amygdala hyperactivity that gives you one of the aforementioned psychiatric disorders, I think that not only should you be offered elective amygdalectomy, but your health insurance should be glad to pay for it (especially if done via ultramodern very safe radiosurgery) one time, rather than for a lifetime supply of more expensive, less effective talk therapies and medications.

  Absurd Adventure And Amygdalectomy Advocacyastralcodexten.com

Clinical psychologist, EMDR consultant and yoga teacher in Boulder, Colorado. Author of The Complex PTSD Workbook and EMDR Therapy and Somatic Psychology; writes on trauma, attachment and the nervous system.

• Recommendstheir ownrcmnd.app

  The Complex PTSD Treatment Manual

  Their words

  Have you grabbed the free worksheets from my Complex PTSD Treatment Manual yet?

  x.com

Clinical psychologist, EMDR consultant and yoga teacher in Boulder, Colorado. Author of The Complex PTSD Workbook and EMDR Therapy and Somatic Psychology; writes on trauma, attachment and the nervous system.

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  The body is not an archive of trauma: what feels like a memory stored in the hips or the jaw is a mind-body feedback loop, and the loop is what therapy interrupts.

  PsychotherapyTrauma

  Their words

  It may not be stored there, but what you're tapping into, it's not a repository of the memory, but it's part of this mind-body feedback loop where there's a sensation that your brain has an association to that might have a familiarity to a time in which you felt sad or scared.

  If the Body Doesn't Keep the Score, What Does?drarielleschwartz.com

Programmer and teacher; writes on software, learning and the web, and makes the Coding Blocks video course.

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  The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys

  Their words

  This is a fascinating topic, and there’s a lot of BS floating around it. This book is one of the good ones.

  rakhim.org

Physician and neuroscientist at the University of Washington; researches brain health, metabolism and athletic performance.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Cooling someone after a head injury does not help; what matters is stopping them from getting hot.

  Trauma

  Their words

  So there have been lots of studies where they've done cooling hypothermia in people after traumatic brain injuries and concussions hasn't really shown much of an effect. What seems to be important is preventing hyperothermia.

  youtube.com

Clinical psychologist, EMDR consultant and yoga teacher in Boulder, Colorado. Author of The Complex PTSD Workbook and EMDR Therapy and Somatic Psychology; writes on trauma, attachment and the nervous system.

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  Unlocking the Past: A Yogic Perspective on Healing Intergenerational Trauma

  Their words

  Join my on-demand course with @YogaUOnline—Unlocking the Past: A Yogic Perspective on Healing Intergenerational Trauma, exploring how yogic approaches can resolve inherited trauma.

  x.com

Psychiatrist and clinical assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University. Writes Psychiatry at the Margins on the philosophical and scientific arguments inside psychiatry and the psy-sciences.

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  A prescriber cannot outsource containment to the therapy hour: the emotional and relational dynamics are part of prescribing, not an intrusion on it.

  Psychotherapy

  Their words

  The emotional and relational dynamics are not an intrusion upon the work of prescribing. They are a part of the work itself.

  psychiatrymargins.com

Clinical psychologist and clinical professor of psychiatry at UCSF. His 2010 meta-analysis established psychodynamic therapy as an evidence-based treatment; he has argued ever since that "evidence-based therapy" is used as a marketing term.

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  Telling a patient "your feelings are valid" is not therapy: it is the mirror image of "get a grip", and it makes the therapist a judge of feelings instead of a companion in them.

  Psychotherapy

  Their words

  The phrase "your feelings are valid" does not invite curiosity or deeper self-understanding, which is the point of psychotherapy. It is the mirror image of "stop whining and get a grip." One sounds warm and one sounds harsh, but neither deepens self-awareness.

  jonathanshedler.substack.com

Swedish essayist who writes Escaping Flatland, a newsletter of essays on relationships, thinking, writing and homeschooling.

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  Practices marketed as transformative, such as therapy, meditation, and psychedelics, often produce little real progress despite years of use.

  psychedelicsPsychotherapy

  Their words

  There are many practices that promise to transform and improve us-therapy, meditation, psychedelics-, but that branding doesn't mean that they actually do much for us: it is common to see people use these techniques for years without any obvious progress on their problems.

  How not to forget what mattershenrikkarlsson.xyz

Founder and former CEO of Zynga, the social-games company behind FarmVille, Zynga Poker and Words with Friends; says he founded ten companies in all, and wrote Life at the Speed of Play.

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  A founder's gut instincts are almost always right and the ideas built on top of them are usually wrong, so the work is to isolate the instinct and test many ideas around it.

  Their words

  we have these instincts like in our gut, these human level instincts that are pretty much always right. And then we put these ideas on top of the instincts that are usually wrong. And my rule of thumb is your instincts are right 95% of the time.

  youtube.com

Genomics researcher and writer on science, biotech and the culture of research.

From one piece Manufacturing requirements are killing cell and gene therapy 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  Manufacturing and batch-release requirements, not biology, are what kill most promising cell and gene therapies.

  Psychotherapy

  Their words

  Excessive manufacturing requirements are a pervasive problem, especially in the field of cell and gene therapy and they are killing countless of promising medicines before they ever reach patients.

  writingruxandrabio.com

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  Investment will keep draining out of cell and gene therapy until manufacturing and regulatory risk become possible to underwrite.

  Psychotherapy

  Their words

  Until manufacturing and regulatory risks become easier to underwrite, capital will keep drifting away from one of the most promising technologies of the last century.

  writingruxandrabio.com

Geneticist at Harvard; reads ancient DNA to work out how populations moved and mixed, and wrote Who We Are and How We Got Here.

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  Coming into a project with a guess about what the data will show has, again and again, turned out to be wrong.

  Trauma

  Their words

  The work that I've been involved in is consistently shown that I was wrong in my biases coming into the work and I've really been almost traumatized by this. Like again and again I've come into a project with some kind of guess about what the data was showing and then the data doesn't show that.

  youtube.com

Author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts and of Bittersweet; writes The Quiet Life newsletter.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Sacred Therapy: Jewish Spiritual Teachings on Emotional Healing and Inner Wholeness

  Their words

  This book is so full of wisdom and insight. I pulled down my copy just now and it's filled with underlines and margin notes.

  susancain.substack.com

Genomics researcher and writer on science, biotech and the culture of research.

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  How long a trial takes decides which diseases get drugs at all, because capital flows to the indications whose endpoints can be measured quickly.

  Psychotherapy

  Their words

  Lastly, the duration of a clinical trial does not merely determine how fast an individual therapy reaches patients. It also shapes which diseases attract serious investment and which do not.

  writingruxandrabio.com

Founder of the International Center for Clinical Excellence and originator of Feedback-Informed Treatment. Writes about what actually makes a therapist effective, usually against the field's own assumptions about training and experience.

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  Outcome Rating Scale (ORS)

  Their words

  The ORS is a brief, 4-item measure designed to assess areas of life functioning known to change as a result of therapeutic intervention. It takes less than one minute to complete and score.

  scottdmiller.com

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  Session Rating Scale (SRS)

  Their words

  The SRS is a brief, 4-item measure designed to assess the therapeutic alliance. It provides immediate feedback on the quality of the relationship and allows for course correction in real time.

  scottdmiller.com

Organizational psychologist and professor at the Wharton School. Author of Give and Take, Originals, Think Again and Hidden Potential, host of the Re:Thinking podcast, and writer of the GRANTED newsletter.

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  The Balancing Act

  Their words

  The Balancing Act by therapist Nedra Tawwab (February)

  adamgrant.substack.com

Psychologist and writer. Author of the memoir Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class, and of a newsletter on human nature, psychology, social class and what he calls luxury beliefs.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up

  Their words

  Best books I read in 2025: Just a note that these books weren’t all necessarily published this year (though some were). A Story is a Deal: How to use the science of story to motivate and persuade by Will Storr Bringing Up Baby: An Evolutionary View of Pediatrics by Paul Turke Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up by Abigail Shrier

  robkhenderson.com

Designer, illustrator and writer; author of The Shape of Design and of widely read essays on design and the web.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  AI should be treated as an instrument to play rather than a tool to use, because there is no purpose to better machines if they do not also produce better humans.

  Their words

  You use a tool, but you play an instrument. It’s a more expansive way of doing, and the doing of it all is important, because that’s where you develop the instincts for excellence. There is no purpose to better machines if they do not also produce better humans.

  Beyond the Machinefrankchimero.com

Psychiatrist and clinical assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University. Writes Psychiatry at the Margins on the philosophical and scientific arguments inside psychiatry and the psy-sciences.

From one piece The Rumpelstiltskin effect: therapeutic repercussions of clinical diagnosis (with 1 co-authors) 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Self-diagnosis is an attempt to secure the therapeutic effect of a medical intervention patients cannot officially access.

  Psychotherapy

  Their words

  Likewise, self-diagnosis should be understood as an attempt to secure the therapeutic effect of a medical intervention to which patients do not have official access.

  doi.org

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  Diagnoses that have therapeutic effects are medical interventions and should be treated and researched as such.

  Psychotherapy

  Their words

  If a clinical diagnosis can have a therapeutic effect, then, at least in some instances, diagnoses are medical interventions in themselves and ought to be treated and researched as such, with an eye to both positive effects and potential iatrogenic harms.

  doi.org

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  Clinical diagnosis can have a therapeutic effect independent of any other intervention.

  Psychotherapy

  Their words

  Their experiences highlight a striking, neglected and unchristened medical phenomenon: The therapeutic effect of a clinical diagnosis, independent of any other intervention, where clinical diagnosis refers to situating the person's experiences into a clinical category by a clinician or the patient.

  doi.org

Founder of the International Center for Clinical Excellence and originator of Feedback-Informed Treatment. Writes about what actually makes a therapist effective, usually against the field's own assumptions about training and experience.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A therapy is only shown to be more effective if it is compared against another treatment intended to help, not against a control nobody expected to work.

  EMDRPsychotherapyCBT

  Their words

  If one really wanted to know whether a treatment (e.g., CBT, IPT, ACT, EMDR) was more effective, it had to be directly compared to an approach intended to help - what Wampold and colleagues termed, a "bona fide" treatment. Doing otherwise, they argued, conflated artifacts of research design with actual research results.

  writings.scottdmiller.com

Founder of the International Center for Clinical Excellence and originator of Feedback-Informed Treatment. Writes about what actually makes a therapist effective, usually against the field's own assumptions about training and experience.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Therapists overestimate their own effectiveness by about 65%, and it is not a Western cultural artifact.

  Psychotherapy

  Their words

  Since 2012 when the first study appeared in the literature, others have been published documenting the tendency of practitioners to overestimate their effectiveness - on average, by 65% (1, 2).

  Alas, it seems everyone comes from Lake Wobegonwritings.scottdmiller.com

Founder of the International Center for Clinical Excellence and originator of Feedback-Informed Treatment. Writes about what actually makes a therapist effective, usually against the field's own assumptions about training and experience.

From one piece How to (and not to) become a more effective therapist 2 beliefs · writings.scottdmiller.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  What does make a therapist more effective is trainable interpersonal skill, not treatment technology.

  Psychotherapy

  Their words

  It turns out that therapists who perform well on the FIS establish stronger relationships and are more effective (2). More to the point, the evidence shows FIS-related skills are trainable and that such training leads to better results (3, 4, 5).

  writings.scottdmiller.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Training a therapist in a treatment model does not make them more effective, however well the model performs in a trial.

  Psychotherapy

  Their words

  Over the last 50 years, treatment methods have proliferated despite a lack of evidence of differential effectiveness between approaches. And even when a randomized controlled trial indicates a particular approach works, none show practitioners become more effective when they are trained in that modality.

  writings.scottdmiller.com

Astrobiologist and theoretical physicist at Arizona State University, working on assembly theory and the physics of life.

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  The frontier of new physics is not high-energy particle physics or quantum gravity, but the problems of life and intelligence.

  energyTrauma

  Their words

  I think for me, the frontier in modern physics, where the new physics lies is not in high energy particle physics, it’s not in quantum gravity, it’s not in any of these sort of traditionally sold, “This is going to be the newest deepest insight we have into the nature of reality.” It is going to be in studying the problems of life and intelligence and the things that are sort of also our current existential crises as a civilization or a culture that’s going through an existential trauma of inventing technologies that we don’t understand right now.

  youtube.com

Founder of the International Center for Clinical Excellence and originator of Feedback-Informed Treatment. Writes about what actually makes a therapist effective, usually against the field's own assumptions about training and experience.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Therapists do not improve with experience: on average they become less effective, and their clients drop out more the longer they have practised.

  Psychotherapy

  Their words

  Indeed, as I've reported in previous posts, research not only shows therapists do not improve with time and experience in the field, but on average become less effective (1, 2, 3, 4).

  writings.scottdmiller.com

American author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck and Everything Is F*cked. Writes essays and book reviews at markmanson.net.

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  The human mind functions as an association-forming machine, linking past experiences to present beliefs.

  Psychotherapy

  Their words

  Exposure therapy works because the human mind is an association machine.

  How to Conquer Your Biggest Fearmarkmanson.net

American author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck and Everything Is F*cked. Writes essays and book reviews at markmanson.net.

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  A substantial share of people's personalities, dispositions, and dysfunctions is genetically driven rather than purely a product of environment or trauma.

  Trauma

  Their words

  But unfortunately, today, we know conclusively that it is simply not true. A great amount of people's personalities, dispositions, beliefs, and dysfunctions are genetically-driven.

  33 Powerful Books That Might Change Your Lifemarkmanson.net

Writer on learning and skill acquisition; author of Ultralearning and Get Better at Anything, known for the MIT Challenge and the Year Without English.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Cognitive Behavior Therapy

  Their words

  I recently reviewed Beck's book, which is written as a practical guide for therapists implementing CBT.

  scotthyoung.com

Family therapist and founder of Relational Life Therapy. Author of I Don't Want to Talk About It, How Can I Get Through to You? and Us; argues that Western individualism is what makes couples' work hard.

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  Character is not fixed: therapy works because habitual neural pathways can re-form, sometimes within minutes.

  Psychotherapy

  Their words

  In my practice, I have seen that opening neural pathways can lead to profound change, to brand-new traits and behavior, sometimes in a matter of minutes.

  The Myth of the Individualterryreal.com