Emotional Intelligence well elucidated.
The better we can distinguish our feelings, the better we can manage them.
Emotional life is not simply a matter of feeling good or feeling bad. There is a world of difference between feeling angry, hurt, disappointed, ashamed, threatened, or rejected. Each tells us something different about how we perceive our situation. Each calls for a different response.
Consider a husband who says, “I’m angry with my wife.” But is he angry? Or is he feeling unimportant, lonely, taken for granted, or afraid of losing her affection? The distinction can change the entire conversation.
We respond not simply to events, but to the psychological meaning those events have for us. And the language we have for our feelings helps us discover that meaning.
Without nuance, we react to a blur of emotions. With nuance, we begin to understand what’s actually happening within us and between us. We can distinguish a threat from a disappointment, an insult from a misunderstanding, a fear from a fact.
The words we have for our feelings influence the choices we have in responding to them.
Psychological maturity is not about having fewer feelings. It’s about knowing more precisely what we’re feeling, why we’re feeling it, and what to do with it.
The more clearly we can name our inner experience, the less blindly we are governed by it.
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🎯
The essence of therapy, as I see it, is companionship in truth.
Healing begins when two people can look together at things that have been too painful, frightening, or confusing to face alone.
A good therapist doesn’t simply offer advice or reassurance. Nor does the therapist pretend that every feeling is a fact or every choice is wise.
Sometimes therapy means finding the courage to acknowledge an unhappy marriage, a painful childhood, a destructive habit, or a truth about ourselves we’ve spent years avoiding.
And it helps enormously to have someone beside us who is neither frightened away by what we reveal nor eager to judge us for it.
Someone who listens carefully, asks good questions, challenges us when necessary, and genuinely cares what happens to us.
We become better able to face ourselves when we discover that we don’t have to face ourselves alone.
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Encouraging news! May there be more to follow.
Today marks a historic milestone for metabolic psychiatry!
Baszucki Group is launching the Global Network for the Advancement of Metabolic Psychiatry (MetPsy), alongside a $20 million investment to establish the McLean Center for Metabolic Psychiatry at McLean Hospital, a Harvard Medical School affiliate.
For years, I've argued that mental disorders can be understood as metabolic disorders impacting the brain. Advancing this field requires rigorous scientific research, innovative clinical care, and education and training to bring emerging discoveries into clinical practice.
This investment will help advance all three.
I'm particularly excited to be leading the education and training initiatives at both McLean Hospital and MH². We'll be developing clinical case conferences, journal clubs, symposia, CME programs, and other opportunities for clinicians and scientists to learn, collaborate, and help shape the future of metabolic psychiatry.
I am deeply grateful to Baszucki Group for their extraordinary commitment to this field and to the many researchers, clinicians, patients, and families who have helped bring us to this moment.
Patients deserve better treatments, and together, we have an opportunity to transform mental health care.
Read the full announcement:
mh2.health/announcement/x
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👏Bravo! Stunningly brilliant and true.
Grateful for this breath of sane fresh air in a highly confused world.
Grateful for this breath of sane fresh air in a highly confused world.
The Power of Young Men
This week in Europe, we have seen young men at their worst and at their best. Some rioted, threw stones and looted. Others stood defiantly in the piazza, demanding peace and order.
The energy is not different. The direction is.
I saw that energy in a California, on a hillside green from recent rain. Butterflies moved through the plants. Ladybugs rested on the leaves.
I was talking with U.S. Marines who had come home from Iraq and Afghanistan. I had left MSNBC and was volunteering with returning combat veterans. I asked them why they would go back to the theater of war, tour after tour.
Every one gave me the same answer.
“I have to go back because I can’t leave my friends there in that terrible situation without me.”
They weren’t talking about politics. They were talking about the men beside them. They had seen what those men were up against. They knew what it meant to leave them there. So they went back.
That power can take men back to war. It can also build a future.
Older men in power understand the force of that bond. They can take the loyalty, courage and aggression of young men and direct it toward war. In Ukraine, the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated that Russian forces were suffering more than 30,000 casualties a month. The number is hard to absorb. Behind it are young men sent into battle by people who do not face the same danger.
Others seek to shame young men for aggression as if condemning the instinct will make it disappear. It will not. Aggression is a force. It can become violence, or it can be a creative force. The question is whether anyone will help young men learn the difference—and give them something worth doing with that energy.
A river needs a channel. Give it one and it can irrigate fields, generate electricity and carry people somewhere. Leave it without direction and it will find its own way. Young men are the same. You cannot shame them into having no anger, no intensity and no desire to test themselves. Those things do not disappear. Without a healthy purpose, the energy turns inward as self-destruction or outward as violence.
We see it lost to gambling, pornography, pot smoking, social media and other forms of escape. I am not saying everyone who gambles, watches pornography or smokes pot is lost. I am saying that when escape takes the place of purpose, a country is watching one of its most valuable resources disappear.
The obvious answer is to give their power somewhere worth going. That requires adults who set a credible vision and trust young men with real responsibility. It requires work worth doing, skills worth learning, teams worth joining and a chance to build something that lasts. It requires discipline without humiliation and expectations without contempt.
This is not only an American question. Every country has young men whose energy could help create its future. Too many are left with a phone, a wager, a screen, a drug or a fight, while the adults around them talk as if they are a problem to be managed.
They are not a problem to be managed. They are a force to be invited into the work of building what comes next.
When young men bring that bond together behind an idea bigger than themselves, anything is possible. The question is whether we can give them a purpose worthy of that loyalty—and a future they can build together.
Subscribe to Dylan Ratigan at dylanratigan.substack.com
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👏Bravo Stunningly Brilliant
The Power of Young Men
This week in Europe, we have seen young men at their worst and at their best. Some rioted, threw stones and looted. Others stood defiantly in the piazza, demanding peace and order.
The energy is not different. The direction is.
I saw that energy in a California, on a hillside green from recent rain. Butterflies moved through the plants. Ladybugs rested on the leaves.
I was talking with U.S. Marines who had come home from Iraq and Afghanistan. I had left MSNBC and was volunteering with returning combat veterans. I asked them why they would go back to the theater of war, tour after tour.
Every one gave me the same answer.
“I have to go back because I can’t leave my friends there in that terrible situation without me.”
They weren’t talking about politics. They were talking about the men beside them. They had seen what those men were up against. They knew what it meant to leave them there. So they went back.
That power can take men back to war. It can also build a future.
Older men in power understand the force of that bond. They can take the loyalty, courage and aggression of young men and direct it toward war. In Ukraine, the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated that Russian forces were suffering more than 30,000 casualties a month. The number is hard to absorb. Behind it are young men sent into battle by people who do not face the same danger.
Others seek to shame young men for aggression as if condemning the instinct will make it disappear. It will not. Aggression is a force. It can become violence, or it can be a creative force. The question is whether anyone will help young men learn the difference—and give them something worth doing with that energy.
A river needs a channel. Give it one and it can irrigate fields, generate electricity and carry people somewhere. Leave it without direction and it will find its own way. Young men are the same. You cannot shame them into having no anger, no intensity and no desire to test themselves. Those things do not disappear. Without a healthy purpose, the energy turns inward as self-destruction or outward as violence.
We see it lost to gambling, pornography, pot smoking, social media and other forms of escape. I am not saying everyone who gambles, watches pornography or smokes pot is lost. I am saying that when escape takes the place of purpose, a country is watching one of its most valuable resources disappear.
The obvious answer is to give their power somewhere worth going. That requires adults who set a credible vision and trust young men with real responsibility. It requires work worth doing, skills worth learning, teams worth joining and a chance to build something that lasts. It requires discipline without humiliation and expectations without contempt.
This is not only an American question. Every country has young men whose energy could help create its future. Too many are left with a phone, a wager, a screen, a drug or a fight, while the adults around them talk as if they are a problem to be managed.
They are not a problem to be managed. They are a force to be invited into the work of building what comes next.
When young men bring that bond together behind an idea bigger than themselves, anything is possible. The question is whether we can give them a purpose worthy of that loyalty—and a future they can build together.
Subscribe to Dylan Ratigan at dylanratigan.substack.com
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Elizabeth E Lehmann retweeted
Today’s Psychologist Credo: Belonging is a biological need.
We need to feel that we matter to someone, that we’re wanted, included, and missed when we’re gone. This isn’t just about feeling good. Our brains and bodies respond to connection, rejection, and loneliness. Being left out can hurt, and being welcomed can help us feel safe. We weren’t built to go through life alone. Belonging isn’t a luxury. It’s part of being human.
We need to feel that we matter to someone, that we’re wanted, included, and missed when we’re gone. This isn’t just about feeling good. Our brains and bodies respond to connection, rejection, and loneliness. Being left out can hurt, and being welcomed can help us feel safe. We weren’t built to go through life alone. Belonging isn’t a luxury. It’s part of being human.
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Encouraging
The 2026 #NobelPrize laureates in physiology or medicine have laid the foundation of a new era in neuroscience.
Using optogenetics, researchers have been able to reveal neural circuits governing specific memories, feelings, and behaviours relevant for neurological and In clinical medicine, researchers are using the method in attempts to restore sight in people with visual impairment.
Optogenetics has fundamentally altered our understanding of the brain. Every day brings new discoveries, helping to solve one of humanity’s great mysteries: how our incredible brain works.
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More about optogenetics
Here are a few examples of the applications of Optogenetics, as explained by @KarlDeisseroth
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Thrilled to be introduced to optogenetics. Eager to learn more.
Today @KarlDeisseroth of @StanfordMed @Stanford won the @NobelPrize for his co-discovery & development of Optogenetics. Here he explains what that is, and how it is unlocking the secrets of brain function & helping to cure diseases.
(And he explains that in ~1min).
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Elizabeth E Lehmann retweeted
This is the second shutout in Yankees vs Red Sox postseason history.
The first was ’25 ALWC G3
Cam Schlittler started both games.
The first was ’25 ALWC G3
Cam Schlittler started both games.
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Boston never recruited them! How sweet it is for us Yankees fans! 🥰
When you grew up watching The Rivalry
But now you're defining it
What a night for Ben Rice #NoTimeLikeOctober
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Reciprocity is uplifting.
☘️ This beautiful sculpture was built by the Irish people to honor the American Choctaw Indian tribe. They were grateful because in 1847 the Choctaw people sent money to Ireland when they learned that Irish people were starving due to the potato famine
📍Co. Cork, Ireland 🇮🇪
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