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Articles by S. Rufus
Does Writing Letters Build Character?
Our ancestors declared love and announced births and deaths in forms that took months to arrive. Letter-writing cultivates empathy, patience, and risk-taking absent in instant messaging. Handwritten letters are acts of faith, requiring courage and exposing writers to vulnerability. We hardly ever say “mail” anymore.
Does Writing Letters Build Character?
Our ancestors declared love and announced births and deaths in forms that took months to arrive. Letter-writing cultivates empathy, patience, and risk-taking absent in instant messaging. Handwritten letters are acts of faith, requiring courage and exposing writers to vulnerability. We hardly ever say “mail” anymore.
Is Reading Obscure Old Books a Bold Act of Rebellion?
Halfway through a sailor’s memoir, published 114 years ago, I’m realizing that it’s my all-time favorite book. “If I could sing, I would sing the banana,” he wrote. “I feel intemperate about it. … The plantain jets upwards … and the fountain returns in broad rippled pennants. … A world could not be old on which such a plant grows.” Reading old books — especially obscure ones, of which perhaps nobody you know has ever heard — is not a waste of time.
Is Reading Obscure Old Books a Bold Act of Rebellion?
The Importance of Empathy Take our Empathy Test Find a therapist near me Seemingly simple hobbies can strengthen our sense of self in ways we might not expect. Reading obscure old books can deliver a sense of purpose and meaning, which boosts well-being. Connecting with nearly forgotten literature can be viewed as an act of gratitude and empathy. For those who can't connect with modern life, old books can convey a rare, much-needed feeling of welcome.
Did My Mother See Apparitions, Angels, Flashbacks or Ghosts?
My mother left this world beset by baffling symptoms following nearly lifelong depression, anorexia, terror, insomnia, and untreated despair. For forty years, she had managed a gift shop. This (unlike me) was her only joy. I spent those last weeks sitting by her bed, first at the hospital, then at the home where doomed patients were sent: we two alone, with staff occasionally drifting through, adjusting tubes. She spent those weeks addressing persons only she could see.
How Halloween Builds Character
Halloween is all about fear. It’s about scaring others and being scared — not just unapologetically, not just without the shame that typically accompanies or follows real-life fear, but gladly and eagerly. Halloween beckons terror just so we can laugh at it, and at each other and ourselves. Throughout the rest of the year, fear tends to strike suddenly and unannounced. That surprise factor, tripping up and felling even the most mindful and well-prepared among us, might be fear’s most potent fuel.
How Halloween Builds Character - S. Rufus
Halloween is all about fear. It’s about scaring others and being scared — not just unapologetically, not just without the shame that typically accompanies or follows real-life fear, but gladly and eagerly. Halloween beckons terror just so we can laugh at it, and at each other and ourselves. Throughout the rest of the year, fear tends to strike suddenly and unannounced. That surprise factor, tripping up and felling even the most mindful and well-prepared among us, might be fear’s most potent fuel.
How Fear Stopped Me From Having Kids
It’s often said that the worst tragedy adults can face is outliving their offspring. “No one,” we’ve heard a thousand times, “should have to bury their own child." I’ve never had to do it—not because I’ve been lucky or blessed, but because I never had children to begin with. I made that decision in third grade, when a classmate’s sister died.
What if You Change Your Name, Then Hate the New One? - S. Rufus
At 26, I legally changed my first name. Having loathed the one I was born with, as detailed in part one of this essay, I’d spent two years seeking a replacement. Friends sent handmade postcards spelling my new name in glittery calligraphy. Seeing these, seeing it printed on paychecks, and seeing it raised like Braille across my credit card, I reeled in horror — every time. Like someone who keeps walking into walls, I wondered: What? But why?
It's Hard to Love Yourself When You Hate Your Name
Imagine hating your own name. Imagine gagging every time you hear, see, say, or write it. I hated my name from the moment I realized it was mine. It sounded like a snarl: Sharon Joy. It twisted faces — first into a cruel smile: shaaarrr, then slackjawed stupor, unnnnj, then oyyy, a feeble wail. I knew no other kids who loathed their names. My classmates cherished their names, chanting them as anthems, scrawling them as charms.
Is Hatred Healthy?
Hatred has a bad rap. But admit this: Hating something or someone doesn't always feel bad. Sometimes it feels shockingly good. Sometimes it feels righteous, invigorating, inspiring, or even fun. Society, religion and other putative arbiters of human conduct declare hatred evil, antisocial, destructive and cruel. They say it's born of ignorance, that only stupid brutes can hate.
Halloween Is Exposure Therapy
Halloween is therapy. All holidays are therapy. Halloween is exposure therapy. Its screaming skulls and faux headstones aren't mere cheap thrills. They force us to remember death and what it does. Each holiday helps us address and process some profound aspect of human life, from nationhood to changing seasons to those awesome and appalling mysteries that some call God. So Halloween happens at what, in the northern hemisphere, is a morbid turning point.
Halloween Is Exposure Therapy - S. Rufus
Halloween is therapy. All holidays are therapy. Halloween is exposure therapy. Its screaming skulls and faux headstones aren't mere cheap thrills. They force us to remember death and what it does. Each holiday helps us address and process some profound aspect of human life, from nationhood to changing seasons to those awesome and appalling mysteries that some call God. So Halloween happens at what, in the northern hemisphere, is a morbid turning point.
It's Hard for Childish Adults to Find Friends
Friendship is its own science. Studies show that having close friends improves mental health, and that talking with close friends improves blood pressure. Heart-rate reactivity lessens when friends pursue tough tasks together. Having close friends has been shown to raise life satisfaction, lengthen life expectancy, and lower mortality risk.
It's Hard for Childish Adults to Find Friends - S. Rufus
Aa Aa Aa - A + Friendship is its own science. Studies show that having close friends improves mental health, and that talking with close friends improves blood pressure. Heart-rate reactivity lessens when friends pursue tough tasks together. Having close friends has been shown to raise life satisfaction, lengthen life expectancy, and lower mortality risk.
Do We Inhabit an Age of Hate?
If I dislike you and can find your social media accounts, I can declare my dislike, using my real name or not. With just a few clicks, I can lacerate your looks, work, intellect, or politics. I can call you a lazy fascist slug. I might be wrong, of course, but I can call anyone anything at any moment. So can you. In a historical sense, this is new.
Childish Adults Feel Pleasure and Pain, But Childishly
You're preparing to board a plane when your flight is abruptly canceled. A gate agent instructs all passengers to wait patiently to be booked on other, later flights. You stomp and swear, flinging your backpack to the floor. Everyone else sits down as directed. You wonder how they all handle this catastrophe so smoothly when they feel exactly the same way about it as I do. They don't. They share your frustration, irritation, shock, and dread. But they feel adult versions of those emotions. You don't.
Childish Adults Feel Pleasure and Pain, But Childishly - S. Rufus
You're preparing to board a plane when your flight is abruptly canceled. A gate agent instructs all passengers to wait patiently to be booked on other, later flights. You stomp and swear, flinging your backpack to the floor. Everyone else sits down as directed. You wonder how they all handle this catastrophe so smoothly when they feel exactly the same way about it as I do. They don't. They share your frustration, irritation, shock, and dread. But they feel adult versions of those emotions. You don't.
For Childish Adults, Nearly Everything Feels Like a Test
Source: SHVETS production / Pexels Does every conversation feel to you like yet another test? Before it starts, can you already half-imagine nano-cameras surveying your face and body, broadcasting each button, blink, and vowel as sirens scream: Awkward! Rude! Ineloquent! Does every chore, meal, meetup, text, and work shift hover like a quiz, audition, or exam designed to measure your intelligence, charisma, and right to exist?
The Conundrum of Childish Adults
During last year's defamation trial between actors Amber Heard and Johnny Depp, audio was played of an incident during which, having admittedly struck him, Heard flung at Depp what she clearly believed was the ultimate insult. "You're a f*cking baby," she snarled. "You're such a baby. Grow the f*ck up!" For many of us, that insult rings all too familiar. What is it about immaturity, even perceived immaturity, that sparks such rage?
The Conundrum of Childish Adults - S. Rufus
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The Griefs of Childish Adults
Childish adults are often told to do things. As a childish adult, I know: We're told to act our age, buck up, grow up, man up, and move on. It's never merely a request—light, friendly, optional—but always a decree, with or without instructions— e.g., "Act your age and pay f*cking attention for a change." We are commanded to stop sulking, screaming, stalling, squalling, being self-absorbed, being scared, and stomping off. We are commanded to clean up, calm down, and be considerate.
The Griefs of Childish Adults - S. Rufus
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Why Are Childish Adults Childish? - S. Rufus
Some of us spend our adult lives being called stuck, stalled, backward, childish, infantile, juvenile, or immature. These adjectives are not meant as neutral descriptors but as insults at the same degree of offense as, say, "lazy," "clumsy," "shallow," "stupid," "sloppy," or "dysfunctional," for which they're sometimes synonyms. We are described as such — and scolded to "grow up" — because we often respond non-adultishly to real-life challenges.
Can Childish Adults Ever Grow Up?
Being childish in an adult's body isn't cute, carefree, or fun. It's scary, risky, overwhelming and embarrassing. It's not a personality disorder, technically, but emotional immaturity — the inability to process situations age-appropriately — can fuel dysfunctional patterns that last lifetimes and corrode our very cores. Imagine being forty-plus and flattening yourself against all walls instinctively to let the "big kids" pass.
Is True Crime Too Trendy? - S. Rufus
A 23-year-old South Korean woman whom reporters call a "true-crime aficionado" confessed last month to killing and dismembering someone she met online. Allegedly "obsessed" with books and broadcasts detailing actual murders, Jung Yoo-Jung reportedly killed "out of curiosity." I, too, was obsessed with true crime at her age, and for nearly all my life before. Transfixed, I treasured In Cold Blood and then Beyond Belief—about two lovers who tortured and murdered five children in Yorkshire.
Psychology Today
Religious believers are more likely to interpret information in an emotional or intuitive manner, involving more ancient brain areas.
Did Making Your Anxious Parent Anxious Make You Anxious?
Did you make your parents anxious? Not that you intended to, but did you? Did one or both of your parents monitor your every move? Did they hold you too little or too much, meet your gaze fearfully or not at all, sweat wild-eyed during social gatherings? Did they discuss stranglers and surgeries and bombs way more than other people's parents did?
How Much of "You" Isn't Really You?
When some of us were very young, our parents decided who we should be. This was their power — as adults, as our adults, in whom we had no option but to trust, having been born into a species whose young are more helpless than other mammalians whose newborns can stand, then walk, mere minutes after birth. We so depended on our parents that, at first, we simply did as they said, not yet knowing how subjective those instructions were.
The Paths to Success
The Roads to Success By Glenn Geher Ph.D. All-out selfish or truly caring? Does Success Make You Sick? By S. Rufus Achievements don't always make us happy. The Effort You Put In By Art Markman Ph.D. Decisions about effort are focused on outcomes.
Don't Hate Yourself for Hating the Holidays
We "aren't allowed" to hate the holidays. This nope-don't-hate-me message infuses holiday iconography, social and spiritual rituals, clothes, cards, cuisine, and songs. They're all encoded—sometimes literally emblazoned—with such potent words as "love," "joy," "merry," "happy," "hope," and "peace." They depict dazzling light. Only a monster could hate that. Or so we tell ourselves and/or are told. Hating the holidays can happen for any of twenty thousand reasons, some of which we will discuss below.
10 Things to Be Thankful for Even If You Hate Yourself
When a major holiday is based on gratitude—which, with its scientifically proven mind and body benefits, features prominently in self-help circles these days—those with low self-esteem face major pitfalls. What if we think we don't deserve good things? What if we believe ourselves so incompetent/inferior/evil that we attained our careers, friendships, and other accomplishments unfairly or by accident? What if we cannot "own" whatever we should ostensibly be thankful for?
18 Reasons Why Social Media Makes Us Hate Ourselves
Social media is designed to make us hate ourselves. It's engineered to scare and shame us — mainly by being a nonstop global gauge broadcasting our aloneness and unpopularity for all to see. Even its benefits — so far-reaching! so fast! — fuel its capacity for harm.
20 Things That Low Self-Esteem Steals
The worst part of self-hatred is believing you deserve it, and it's also the defining characteristic of low self-esteem. Those who suffer from low self-esteem tend not to fight it because they view their self-hatred not as an affliction but as the sole possible reaction to facts.
Psychology Today
Divorced and Forgiving By Arash Emamzadeh When divorced parents are more likely to forgive.
7 Reasons Why Good Friends Ghost Us
Being ghosted hurts. The closer the ghoster, the worse the hurt. When we're ghosted by near-strangers whom we formerly "knew" only online — maybe only for minutes — we can console ourselves by concluding that they suffer from social anxiety or are a jerk. When new friends ghost us, we can tell ourselves: OK, we really hit it off at first, but after a few Fortnite games they realized I'm not as hilarious, sporty, or interested in allosaurs as I first seemed.
7 Reasons Even Good Friends Might Ghost Us
Being ghosted hurts. The closer the ghoster, the worse the hurt. When we're ghosted by near-strangers whom we formerly "knew" only online — maybe only for minutes — we can console ourselves by concluding that they suffer from social anxiety or are a jerk. When new friends ghost us, we can tell ourselves: OK, we really hit it off at first, but after a few Fortnite games they realized I'm not as hilarious, sporty, or interested in allosaurs as I first seemed.
5 Things Selfies Don't Say
Until quite recently, the vast majority of photographs were snapped through lenses pointing outward, away from their takers. Now the focus has reversed. Old photos depict places, people, things, but almost never their chroniclers, the photographers. Old photos say: Here is the Colosseum. Look at Jane. Selfies say: Look at me. Selfies might also say, "Behind me is the Colosseum.
The 5 Ingredients of Shame
Shame is a raging cold-sweat dread about things we deem vile yet which we have done, said, thought, desired, been or are. Shame is a punch-your-forehead cocktail of emotions that simmers and swells inside of us and refuses to be talked away. Shame is not bland embarrassment. Shame is not wishing we had ordered soup instead. Shame is not wide-eyed cringe emojis on a screen.
The Spiritual Meaning of Tooth Pain
There is a unique connection between spirituality, science, and your smile. Discover the spiritual meaning of tooth pain. Poor oral hygiene, delayed treatment, stress, and unhealthy dietary habits are some of the usual suspects related to dental pain. But did you know there can be a deeper cause or spiritual meaning of tooth pain? That certain emotions, thoughts, and feelings have the power to trigger and even exacerbate dental discomfort?
Low Self-Esteem Needs a New Name
Manic depression was given a new name. Now it's bipolar disorder. The ex-Czech Republic became Czechia. Low self-esteem should also be renamed. It is a clunky, antiquated, circuitous phrase that dilutes, thus dismisses, the crippling and sometimes lethal pain that it describes. With two leapfrogging L and S sounds, "low self-esteem" twists tongues — daring speakers not to slur.
12 Reasons Why "Find Your Passion" Can Be the Worst Advice
These three words might comprise the commonest, best-meant advice proffered to those of us who are bored, sad, anxious, afraid, awkward, lonely, avoidant, self-hating or struggling with recovery: Find your passion. It means: Seek joy and purpose. Live your truth, whether that comprises rock-climbing, ferret-raising, dubstep, learning Dutch, anything. Remember and reclaim what you love.
Invoke the Mystical Phoenix
The phoenix appears throughout the world as a symbol of rebirth and resilience. How can you invoke the power of the mystical phoenix in your daily life? Imagine a fiery red, elegant, feather-winged beast rising from the ashes. This, the phoenix, is a familiar image for many of us. I can recall the very first time I encountered its majesty while watching Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets as a child.
Walking the Divine Fido
Praying to dog? Studies have shown prayer has a positive impact on mental and physical health and healing—regardless of who or what you pray to. When it comes to divine attribution, felines generally grab the limelight over canines. I suppose that isn’t surprising. Cats have a spectacular way of embodying a transcendent aloofness. Well, at least in my house, they do. And although my spouse constantly advocates for introducing some canine energy, I resist.
5 Snappy Comebacks for Your Inner Critic
When its vicious insults and wild warnings go into overdrive, try these. Posted Feb 24, 2021 1. I know what you are. You sound like the voice of reason, blasting reasonable-sounding commentary such as No one likes me and I suck. But you are not a voice. You are a neurochemical misfiring, a mistake. You are my limbic system refracted through depression, low self-esteem, trauma and/or perfectionism, fixating on negativity, misreading situations as disastrous when they're not. My brain is wired this way.
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