You've noticed things aren't working anymore.

The strategies that got you through life - pushing forward, staying busy, keeping emotions at bay - have stopped being effective. Relationships feel strained. Your partner says you're "emotionally unavailable." Your kids seem distant. Work success isn't bringing the satisfaction it once did. You're questioning yourself in ways you never have before.

Maybe you've had a significant life event - a divorce, a career setback, a health scare - that's forced you to pause.

You look around and wonder: "Is this it? Is this all there is?"

Here's something that will blow your mind:

"Crazy Train" is a disco song. 🎶

That's right, the most recognizable heavy metal anthem—Ozzy Osbourne's headbanging classic—has a distinctly disco rhythm section, according to the hosts of the One Song podcast. And if you've seen the live version of ABBA's "Mamma Mia", they reference the Crazy Train guitar riff in their own disco-heavy performance.

It reminds me that how we see the world is often not the same as the world itself.

Here's what they don't tell you about the modern man's relationship with work:

It's not all about ambition or career advancement.

Sometimes it’s about avoiding the messy, unpredictable complexity of real life, and the exhausting vulnerability that comes with authentic relationships.

While women have been gathering, men have been scrolling. Blame the pandemic or social media, but men have gotten used to the frictionless way that their phone allows them to interact with the world. And it's costing them.

Here's what they don't tell you about perfection:

It's not actually about achieving excellence.

It's about avoiding the anxiety of being human, and the exhausting performance that comes with it.

Society trains us to see backward movement as failure. In business, declining numbers mean you're losing. In fitness, moving less weight than last week means you're getting weaker. In school, failing to advance to the next grade means you're not smart enough.

But healing operates by different rules.

Sometimes the most profound growth happens when you consciously choose to step back and regroup instead of pushing forward for the sake of progress.

Here's what they don't tell you about vulnerability:

It's not actually about being vulnerable.

It's about finding someone who won't turn your openness into a weapon.

Picture the most isolated professional you've ever met. Someone carrying the weight of their clients' stories, processing trauma day after day, making life-altering decisions in therapy sessions. Every challenge feels insurmountable. Every setback feels personal. Every difficult case becomes a referendum on their competence.

This is what happens when mental health professionals try to do this work in isolation.

It doesn't have to be this way.

We think we know about fear responses. We've heard the stories. Fight or flight. The adrenaline surge. The quick decision between confronting danger or running from it.

But there's something else. Something older. Something that happens when fighting won't work and fleeing isn't possible.

Shutdown.

Picture the most organized office you've ever seen. Every document has its place. Every memory, every experience, every moment gets sorted, classified, and filed away properly. The drawer slides open when you need something, you retrieve what you're looking for, and then it closes with a satisfying click.

This is how our minds are supposed to work. Experience something, process it, understand it, file it away. Next.

But what happens when the system breaks down?

The human mind is a curious thing. It collects voices like a radio collector gathers vintage sets, storing them away for moments when clarity seems impossible to find.

But here's what most people don't realize: the voice offering you guidance in your most crucial moments might not actually be yours.

Think about the last time you took a real road trip. Not a commute, but an actual journey with people you care about. Remember how different it felt when you hit construction, got stuck in traffic, or took a wrong turn?

Instead of rage and frustration, there was conversation. Instead of isolation, there was connection. The same obstacles that would ruin a commute became part of the story, part of the adventure.

Pain works the same way.

It's never just one thing.

We tell ourselves stories about single moments, isolated incidents, the one bad thing that happened. But trauma doesn't work that way. It cascades.

We think we're having the same conversation.

We're not.

You're speaking rapport. They're speaking report. Or maybe it's the other way around. Either way, you're both frustrated, both convinced the other person isn't listening, both certain you're right.

An RCMP member stood up and described a line of duty shooting. Not the moment of violence itself, but what came after. The silence from leadership. The bureaucratic shuffle. The people in the "white shirts" who suddenly became strangers when support was needed most.

Their words were simple but devastating: the lack of support was more damaging than the shooting itself.

This is moral injury. And it's time we understood what it's really costing

Pop culture has a way of holding up a mirror to society, reflecting back truths we'd rather not face. This week, it's Sabrina Carpenter doing the reflecting with her summer anthem about men's incompetence. The song is brutal in its honesty:

"Never heard of self care / Half your brain isn't there."

Ouch.

Rivers don't fight their banks. They don't try to make the water stop flowing. They work with the landscape, carving new paths when needed, but always, always moving.

The river is powerful not because it's still, but because it's alive

Here's something that will make you uncomfortable: Your stability might be the very thing destroying your relationships.

This insight cuts to the heart of why so many relationships spiral into patterns of resentment and disconnection.

When you are stable, you enable.

Exposure to someone else’s trauma can be traumatizing in itself.

The weight of other people's worst moments can crush the helper just as surely as it crushed the person who lived through it.

But we also get to see people at their grittiest, resilient best.

There is a power dynamic that shows up uninvited to every dinner conversation, every decision about money, every moment when someone needs to be right and someone else needs to keep the peace.

Therapists have a name for what most of us are doing without realizing it:

One up and one down.

Here's what's interesting: we think this is natural. We think it's just how things work.

It's not.