Therapized

12/26/2025

Staying Human in a Filtered World

Christmas has been weird.

Not sad. Not wrong. Just… different. And maybe that’s because everything else feels different too.

My book is launching. That part is exciting—deeply, genuinely exciting. This thing I’ve carried for years is finally stepping into the world. Therapized isn’t just a book; it’s a record of survival, reflection, and learning how to stay human when systems, expectations, and even good intentions pull you away from yourself.

But launching a book comes with its own strangeness. Photo shoots that don’t quite look like me. Images that are technically “good” but feel unfamiliar. Hair down when it’s usually in a bun. Makeup when I usually take five minutes to get ready—because I’m busy living. Sometimes even when I’m dressed up, my hair still isn’t “done.” That’s just who I am. And yet, every time I see those polished images, there’s a moment of disorientation. Not because they’re bad—but because they aren’t me.

And lately, that feeling has been amplified by something bigger.

AI is fascinating. Truly. It can be creative, helpful, funny, efficient. It can be used for good—and we actually used it that way over the holidays. My family and I were joking around, making images of ourselves as if we were other people. It was hilarious. Clearly fake. Clearly a joke. Our dogs were the only ones who actually looked like themselves. Everyone else wasn’t us at all.

My son even posted one of the images as if it were me—and I genuinely don’t know if people thought it was actually me. Or him. Or my husband. That’s the part that stopped me.

Because the joke landed a little too easily.

It made me realize how accustomed we’ve become to distortion. Botox. Fillers. Filters. AI enhancements. Faces that don’t move. Bodies that don’t age. Images that don’t resemble the people standing next to you on the street. We laughed—but underneath it, something heavier surfaced. This is the world we’re living in now: one where fake feels normal enough that a joke can pass as real.

And that makes me a little sad.

I think about my grandmother—how she aged. How beautiful she was as an older woman. How her face told a story. And my mom too. She died young, but even then, she was older to me. And she was beautiful. Natural. Unfiltered. Human.

Now we have twenty-year-olds doing Botox and fillers before they’ve even had a chance to be themselves. We’re erasing expression before it has time to form. And AI takes it even further—so much so that sometimes I look at photos online and genuinely wonder: is any of this real? Are these images real? Are any of them?

The perfect Christmas pictures. The flawless faces. The curated joy. To be honest—it’s mostly bu****it.

I’ve also noticed something else—many of the articles I’ve written lately sound similar. The themes repeat. The ideas circle back. At first, I wondered if that meant I was stuck.

Now I understand it means the message is important.

Repetition isn’t laziness. It’s insistence. It’s the way truth works its way through us until it finally lands. The world keeps speeding up, smoothing over edges, replacing presence with performance—and I keep writing about slowing down, telling the truth, staying grounded, choosing authenticity. Not because I lack new thoughts, but because we still haven’t absorbed the old ones.

Christmas used to be grounding. Imperfect. Loud in some places, quiet in others. Human. Now it often feels like another performance—another moment to capture, edit, improve. And for years, I thought something was wrong with me for being quieter during the holidays.

There wasn’t.

Quiet is how I resist distortion.

This Christmas, the most exciting thing I did was go to church for Jesus’s birthday. The rest was simple. My family. Comfortable clothes. Being lazy together. The day after Christmas is quiet too. Some people go back to work. Some don’t. In New York, there’s a snowstorm coming—an actual reason to slow down. To stay in. To reflect.

And reflecting on that silly AI joke showed me something else: how posting one image can reveal who’s close to you, and who’s drifting. Who notices when something isn’t real. Who thinks it’s normal to present something completely altered as truth. It’s like shedding leaves from a tree—something I write about in my book. People are there for a season. They matter when they’re meant to. And then paths diverge. That’s not bitterness. It’s growth.

At its core, Christmas honors the most unfiltered arrival imaginable. No spectacle. No perfection. No enhancement. Just Jesus—born into vulnerability, humility, and presence. Rest wasn’t a break from meaning; it was the meaning.

So while my book steps into the world—and while technology keeps asking us to become shinier, smoother versions of ourselves—I’m choosing something else.

I’m choosing to stay recognizable to myself.

I’m actually excited to be getting older. A lot of people don’t have that privilege. Aging means I’m still here. Still learning. Still shedding what no longer fits.

If Therapized does anything, I hope it reminds people that healing doesn’t come from upgrading who we are. It comes from returning to ourselves—again and again—even if it sounds repetitive, even if it isn’t flashy, even if it’s quiet.

Especially if it’s quiet.

12/14/2025

12/12/2025

12/11/2025

12/11/2025

Before you read this, I can’t help but think of Joe—this kid who had every barrier stacked against him and still kept learning, kept pushing, kept believing there had to be a way in. Daphne Koller’s story feels like it was written for kids like him. She didn’t just change education; she cracked open a world that was never designed for the Joes of this world… and in doing so, she proved that brilliance doesn’t need permission—it needs access.

At 13, she was studying at university. By 21, she'd decided that was wrong—not for her, but for everyone who couldn't.
Daphne Koller grew up tearing through textbooks faster than schools could assign them. While other kids memorized times tables, she was solving problems most adults couldn't understand. Her parents recognized something extraordinary and made a radical choice: enroll her at Hebrew University at age 13.
She earned her bachelor's degree at 17. Her master's at 18. By her early twenties, she was at Stanford becoming one of the world's leading artificial intelligence researchers.
But success opened her eyes to a troubling truth.
The same doors that swung open for her remained locked for millions of others. Not because they lacked curiosity or capability—but because of where they were born, how much money their families had, or which networks they belonged to.
Education was designed around scarcity. Elite universities accepted tiny percentages of applicants. Tuition climbed beyond reach. Geography determined destiny.
Knowledge wasn't scarce. Access was.
Then in 2011, something extraordinary happened in a Stanford office.
Her colleague Andrew Ng launched an experiment: what if we put a machine learning course online? Maybe a few hundred students would enroll. A thousand would be incredible.
Instead, over 160,000 people signed up.
They logged in from villages without electricity, from internet cafés in cities halfway around the world, from apartments where three families shared one computer. People who would never see Stanford's campus were suddenly learning from one of its greatest professors.
The revelation was seismic: the demand for education was limitless. Scarcity had always been artificial.
But when Daphne and Andrew announced they were building a platform to make this permanent—to give away elite education for free—the backlash was swift.
Critics insisted online learning could never match physical classrooms. Administrators worried it would cheapen their institutions' prestige. Skeptics predicted students would never finish without traditional pressure.
Beneath every objection was the same assumption: elite education must stay elite.
Daphne refused to accept that.
In 2012, she and Ng co-founded Coursera—a platform built on a revolutionary idea: world-class education should belong to anyone with internet access. No tuition. No admissions gatekeepers. No geographic barriers.
Four universities joined initially: Stanford, Princeton, Penn, and Michigan. Within months, hundreds of thousands enrolled. Within a year, millions.
Farmers in rural India learned computer science from California professors. Single mothers working night shifts studied public health. Refugees completed Ivy League courses from displacement camps. A global commons replaced the guarded fortress.
And those predictions about online students failing? They were wrong.
Thousands earned certificates, mastered skills, changed careers entirely. Volunteers translated courses into dozens of languages. What started as an experiment became a movement.
Daphne's AI expertise transformed how it worked. She analyzed how students learned, where they struggled, which explanations clicked. Data impossible to gather in traditional classrooms made continuous improvement possible.
Today, Coursera serves over 148 million learners across virtually every field imaginable.
Daphne eventually moved on to tackle another revolution—using AI to accelerate drug discovery through her company Insitro—but her impact on education keeps expanding.
She didn't just build a platform. She challenged a philosophy.
Education isn't about ivy-covered walls or legacy admissions. It's about teaching and learning. Credentials matter less than capabilities. And if knowledge can be shared at near-zero cost, gatekeeping makes no moral sense.
It all started with one question nobody else dared to ask:
Why should only the privileged learn from the best?
Sometimes the most powerful change comes from refusing to accept that things must stay the way they've always been.

11/29/2025

Megan Feller smoked pot several times a day and couldn’t eat, sleep, or function without it. But at the time, she didn't see the need to reach out for help.

“I didn’t think cannabis was a big deal,” the 24-year-old said. “It was really socially accepted.”

This attitude is common. As more states legalize ma*****na, use has become more normalized, and products have become more potent. But fewer of those who are addicted seek help for it.

Pot use among young adults reached historic levels in recent years, according to a federally supported survey. Daily use even outpaced daily drinking, with nearly 18 million Americans reporting in 2022 that they use ma*****na every day or nearly every day, up from less than 1 million three decades earlier.

Studies show a corresponding increase in cannabis use disorder -- when people crave ma*****na and spend lots of time using it, even though it causes problems at home, school, work, or in relationships. It’s a condition that researchers estimate affects about 3 in 10 pot users and can be mild, moderate, or severe.

And it's an addiction -- despite the common misconception that that's not possible with ma*****na, said Dr. Smita Das, an addiction psychiatrist at Stanford University.

Meanwhile, the drug’s widespread acceptance has fueled a stigma about seeking treatment, said Dr. Jennifer Exo of the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation in Minnesota.

“There’s this pervasive belief that you can’t become addicted, it can’t actually be a problem,” she said. “It has to do with this myth that cannabis is safe, natural, and benign.”



Stronger w**d, bigger problems

While pot isn’t as harmful as harder drugs, frequent or heavy use has been linked to problems with learning, memory, and attention, as well as chronic nausea, vomiting, and lung problems among those who smoke it. Some evidence has also linked it to the earlier onset of psychosis in people with genetic risk factors for psychotic disorders like schizophrenia.

And today’s pot is not the same as that of the past.

Many people recall older relatives who “smoked a few doobies and ate some food and fell asleep,” Exo said. “But it’s absolutely different.”

In the 1960s, most pot that people smoked contained less than 5 percent THC, the ingredient that causes a high. Today, the THC potency in cannabis flower and concentrates sold in dispensaries can reach 40 percent or more, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Teens are often va**ng potent ma*****na concentrates, Exo said, rather than eating brownies made with cannabis flower or taking a hit from a b**g.

More access to ma*****na, rising ER visits

Pot is also increasingly available. Though it’s still a federal crime to possess it, 24 states allow recreational use by adults and 40 allow medical use as of late June, the National Conference of State Legislatures said. Dispensaries abound, and more people are able to keep pot at home.

Research links the legalization of recreational ma*****na with rising emergency room visits for “acute cannabis intoxication,” in which patients may experience a rapid heartbeat or feel dizzy, confused, or paranoid.

A study last year focused on Michigan found that legalization was associated with an immediate increase in the rate of ER visits for this condition among people of all ages, especially middle-aged adults.

Das said increased access to cannabis, along with a growing number of cannabis products with higher potency, contribute to rising ER visits. Edibles such as gummies can pose a particular problem because they take a little while to kick in, so people may keep taking more, because they don’t yet feel the drug’s effects.

“Then, suddenly, they’re suffering from cannabis toxicity,” she said.

Why treatment is often overlooked

Feller first tried pot at 16 and quickly went from smoking the plant to using v**e cartridges that were easy to hide in her pocket. Soon, she could barely get by without it.

“I would wake up every morning for years, and until I smoked w**d, I would throw up,” she said. Instead of trying to get high, she used it “to make these other symptoms go away.”

Feller was also drinking a lot, and her parents sent her to a treatment center when she was around 18. It didn’t help, because she wasn’t ready to get well. After her mother died, her substance use worsened.

At 22, Feller entered Hazelden on her own -- but only to get sober from alcohol, which she did.

She kept using pot on and off, then finally sought treatment for cannabis use disorder and has been sober from ma*****na for almost a year.

“I’m so much happier now,” she said. “I don’t feel, like, shackled to a substance.”

Such treatment is often overlooked, said Brian Graves, a researcher at Florida Atlantic University.

He and his colleagues published a study this year showing that the share of people who got treatment for cannabis use disorder from their nationally representative sample dropped from 19 percent in 2003 to 13 percent in 2019. An earlier study also found a marked decline and pointed to reasons that include “expanding cannabis legalization and more tolerant attitudes.”

Experts said people need to be educated that pot, like alcohol, can be misused and can cause real harm.

“Another important piece is helping people understand the risk before they start,” Exo said, “and then to feel safe enough to say, ‘Hey, I need help managing this.’”

Many people wait until their ma*****na use causes problems in multiple parts of their lives before they seek treatment -- if they ever do.

“If you’re changing your life because of w**d, there might be an issue,” Feller added. “There are resources to get help, and you are not alone.”

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11/28/2025

Happy Thanksgiving
to the ones who don’t have a big family gathering today.

To the people eating alone.
To the ones keeping it small.
To the ones who weren’t invited.
To the ones who chose peace over chaos.
To the ones who lost someone and feel that empty seat.
To the ones who don’t have a “table” that looks like everyone else’s.

You’re not any less loved.
You’re not any less worthy.
You’re not any less “holidayish” because your day looks different.

Some families are loud and crowded.
Some families are one person and a plate.
Some families are chosen, not blood.
Some families are still being built.

However today looks for you…
I hope you find a moment of comfort.
A moment of warmth.
A moment that reminds you you’re not alone in this world.

Happy Thanksgiving to the ones with quiet holidays.
You matter just as much as the full tables.

11/14/2025

Lady Gaga had a psychotic break after filming "A Star Is Born" and while on her "Joanne" world tour: “I did ‘A Star Is Born’ on lithium.” https://wp.me/pc8uak-1lGzbt

“There was one day that my sister said to me, ‘I don’t see my sister anymore.’ And I canceled the tour. There was one day I went to the hospital for psychiatric care. I needed to take a break. I couldn’t do anything … I completely crashed," Gaga told Rolling Stone. "It was really scary. There was a time where I didn’t think I could get better.… I feel really lucky to be alive. I know that might sound dramatic, but we know how this can go."