Laura Pike Seeley

Let’s say someone has both a high-functioning theory of mind and an overflowing well of compassion. What then? Well, this is what Hoffman calls “empathic over-arousal.” A person will feel so worn down by the intensity of other people’s emotions that it wears them down — it turns their distress into my actual distress. This might not seem like a bad... See more

Very few issues worthy of debate are black and white. That’s why we need to grapple with the gray areas of life, of which there are many. It’s always tempting to reduce issues to binary choices between right and wrong, good and evil, beneficial and destructive. But it’s ultimately self-defeating; binary thinking discourages complex reasoning while... See more

An atmosphere of psychological safety is essential for organizations who seek to foster innovative, happy, resilient teams.

Your brain is locked in silence and darkness inside your skull, and all it is trying to do is understand the structures of the world so it can operate in it better. Whenever it encounters a surprise, it writes that down and it makes changes to your circuitry.

But as you go through life and your brain develops better models of the world, less and

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I imagine some mythic women in floral dresses who simply slide into motherhood, goddesses unbothered by the smell of poop, at home in any damp cave. These are the “naturals”: the mom on a transatlantic flight handling three small children, or the unwashed breastfeeding mom who says she wouldn’t mind “another one.” But then there are others, such as... See more