Becoming a mother triggers a profound existential crisis that goes beyond physical and social changes. The weight of responsibility for another life's survival, combined with a sustained confrontation with mortality, creates a fundamental shift in one's relationship to existence.

As existential psychotherapist Claire Arnold-Baker explains, 'Everything has to be chosen again.' Women must make high-stakes decisions about how to mother, how to incorporate this new identity, and what matters most—all while navigating the 'void of the future' with no clear path forward.

This crisis is intensified by society's failure to acknowledge its significance. Without rituals, community support, or cultural understanding of this transition, women are 'left to overcome this traumatic life crisis, and work things out for themselves, with little or no support.'

Section: 5, Chapter: 11

Author: Lucy Jones

Sleep deprivation is so dangerous that the Guinness Book of World Records no longer includes attempts to break sleep deprivation records, and governments have stopped using it as a torture technique. Yet new mothers routinely experience prolonged periods of severe sleep restriction.

The impacts are devastating: overactive sympathetic nervous systems, hyperactive response to rewarding experiences with diminished self-control, DNA damage, compromised memory formation, and increased risk of numerous physical and mental health conditions. The US military mandates detainees receive 'four hours of continuous sleep every 24 hours'—more than many mothers get in early parenthood.

Neuroscientist Matthew Walker argues that sleep loss is a neglected factor in psychiatric illnesses. Without adequate REM sleep, mothers cannot process emotional events or make sense of their major life transition.

Section: 3, Chapter: 8

Author: Lucy Jones

The key difference between suppressing emotions and controlling them is consciousness. Suppressing emotions is unconscious - you deny or ignore your true reaction and believe it will simply go away if disregarded. This usually leads to disruption in daily life and eventually an uncontrollable emotional outburst.

Controlling emotions, however, involves being fully conscious of how you feel while choosing your response. You're aware that you're angry, sad, or aggrieved, but you decide what to do about it. You're not controlling the emotions themselves but your behavior in response to them.

When suppressing emotions, you don't know how you feel and your behavior seems out of control. When controlling emotions, you do know how you feel, but your behavior remains within your control. Remember: emotions are temporary, but behaviors have lasting consequences.

Section: 1, Chapter: 7

Author: Brianna Wiest

Self-sabotage often stems from what are called core commitments - your primary unconscious objectives or intentions for your life. These are what you want more than anything else, though you're often unaware of them.

Your core commitments are actually cover-ups for core needs. If your subconscious commitment is to be in control, your core need is trust. If your commitment is to be needed, your need is to know you are wanted. If your commitment is to be loved by others, your need is self-love.

The less you feed your core need, the "louder" your commitment symptoms will be. For example, if you need trust but are committed to staying in control, the less supported you feel, the more your negative coping mechanisms like disordered eating or hypervigilance will flare up.

Section: 1, Chapter: 2

Author: Brianna Wiest

The rising generation, despite receiving unprecedented mental health accommodations and resources, has become the loneliest, most anxious, depressed, pessimistic, and helpless cohort on record. 42% have a diagnosed mental illness. Therapists insist this is because young people face more stressors than ever, like smartphones, the pandemic, and climate change. But the author argues youth mental health has been declining for decades before these factors. She believes the real problem may be the mental health system itself - convincing kids they are disordered, inculcating feelings of helplessness, and inhibiting normal development.

Section: 1, Chapter: 0

Author: Abigail Shrier

Psychic thinking is assuming you know what somebody else is thinking or what they intend to do. It's believing the least likely outcome is the most viable because you feel it strongly. It's convincing yourself you've missed out on "another life" you were meant for.

This type of thinking detaches us from reality, replacing logic with emotions that are often incorrect, unreliable, and biased toward what we want to believe. It breeds anxiety and depression because we not only believe our thoughts must be real but predictive of future events.

Psychic thinking is essentially a series of cognitive biases: confirmation (seeking information that supports what we already believe), extrapolation (projecting current circumstances into the future), and spotlighting (imagining everyone is thinking about us when they're focused on themselves).

Section: 1, Chapter: 4

Author: Brianna Wiest

The "reverse golden rule" is simple: don't treat yourself in punishing and poisonous ways you'd never dream of treating someone else. Can you imagine berating a friend the way many of us internally screech at ourselves all day long?

If you met someone at a party who spoke to others the way your inner critic speaks to you, they'd strike you as obviously unbalanced. You might try to get them to leave, and possibly seek help.

This harsh inner voice likely comes from internalizing the notion that if you didn't watch yourself like a hawk, disaster might strike. But this belief belongs to the past; it isn't a reasonable assessment of what would happen now if you treated yourself more decently.

Section: 3, Chapter: 16

Author: Oliver Burkeman

Maternal ambivalence—the simultaneous experience of love and hate toward one's child—is normal yet remains taboo in our culture. Psychoanalyst Rozsika Parker notes that the 'happiness imperative' around motherhood rules out acknowledging the 'inevitable unhappiness' that comes with it.

Having conflicting feelings is not a sign of maternal failure but rather a hallmark of healthy development. The suppression of these normal feelings can lead to harmful outcomes: unmanageable ambivalence might explode into helplessness and violence, or turn inward as excessive self-sacrifice and martyrdom.

When society allows mothers to acknowledge the full spectrum of their emotional lives, it enables them to integrate their experiences honestly rather than splitting into idealized 'good mother' and demonized 'bad mother' narratives.

Section: 4, Chapter: 9

Author: Lucy Jones

Self-sabotage is what happens when we refuse to consciously meet our innermost needs, often because we do not believe we are capable of handling them.

We sabotage relationships because what we really want is to find ourselves, though we're afraid to be alone. We sabotage professional success because what we really want is to create art. We sabotage our healing journey by psychoanalyzing our feelings to avoid experiencing them. We sabotage our self-talk because if we believed in ourselves, we'd feel free to take risks and be vulnerable.

In the end, self-sabotage is very often just a maladaptive coping mechanism, a way we give ourselves what we need without having to actually address what that need is.

Section: 1, Chapter: 2

Author: Brianna Wiest

Chapter 15 details the complex effects of stress on memory formation and retrieval.

• Acute stress causes release of hormones epinephrine and cortisol, which signal the amygdala to activate the hippocampus to consolidate the stressful event as a memory. This prioritizes storage of important, survival-relevant information.
• An optimal amount of acute stress improves attention and memory formation. Too little stress and consolidation isn't boosted.
• Chronic stress leads to prolonged cortisol release, impairing the hippocampus and its ability to form new memories. It can even cause hippocampal neurons to wither and die.
• Techniques like meditation, exercise, yoga and reframing negative thoughts can reduce perceived stress and protect the brain from its memory-harming effects.

Section: 3, Chapter: 15

Author: Lisa Genova

Healing your mind is completely different from healing your body. Physical healing is often a linear repair, returning you to your previous state. Mental healing requires becoming someone entirely new.

Healing yourself means taking an honest inventory of your grudges, longings, and fears. It requires you to face every ounce of darkness within you, because just beneath what appears to be an impermeable barrier is complete freedom. When you're no longer scared to feel anything and no longer resist any part of your life, you find peace.

This process often requires periods of "positive disintegration" where we adapt our self-concept to become someone new who can thrive in our current situation. The discomfort is inevitable—you'll either feel uneasy pushing past limits or you'll feel it while sitting stagnant and afraid. Choose the discomfort that leads to growth.

Section: 1, Chapter: 5

Author: Brianna Wiest

In the early 2010s, rates of anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicide began rising sharply among adolescents, especially girls, across the U.S., UK, Canada and other Western nations. Key trends:

• Depression rates roughly tripled among teen girls and doubled among teen boys in the U.S. between 2010-2020
• Rates of self-harm nearly tripled for younger adolescent girls
• Suicide rates rose dramatically, especially for younger teen girls
• Similar patterns emerged in the UK, Canada, Australia, and across Western Europe at the same time No other theory, such as the 2008 financial crisis or concerns about school shootings and climate change, can explain this sudden, synchronized international increase in teen mental illness. The main factor that changed in the early 2010s was adolescents rapidly transitioning from basic cell phones to smartphones with social media.

Section: 1, Chapter: 1

Author: Jonathan Haidt

Many Vietnam war veterans continued to be haunted by their traumatic combat experiences years or decades later, unable to move on with their lives. Their trauma infiltrated every aspect of their lives, making it difficult to maintain relationships, find satisfaction in work, and control intense emotions like rage. Trauma leaves an imprint on mind, brain, and body that persists long after the original event. Healing requires finding ways to come fully alive in the present rather than remaining stuck in the past.

Section: 1, Chapter: 1

Author: Bessel van der Kolk

Resistance is what happens when we have a new project we need to work on and simply can't bring ourselves to do it. It's when we get into a great new relationship and keep bailing on plans. It's when we have an amazing idea for our business and then feel tension when it comes time to actually work.

Interestingly, we often feel resistance in the face of what's going right in our lives, not what's going wrong. Resistance is your way of slowing down and making sure it's safe to get attached to something new and important.

To overcome resistance, refocus on what you want and why you want it. Identify unconscious beliefs holding you back, and step back into the work when inspired. Wanting is the entryway to showing up after resistance.

Section: 1, Chapter: 2

Author: Brianna Wiest

One of the most confusing aspects of personal growth is that you might not experience instantaneous happiness after a positive life change. The truth about your psyche is this: Anything that is new, even if it is good, will feel uncomfortable until it is also familiar.

Positive life events can actually trigger depressive episodes for several reasons. First, a spike and then decline in mood can exacerbate stress. Second, the expectation that a positive event will eliminate all stress is destructive because it rarely does.

Adjustment shock often manifests as hypervigilance - if you make financial gains, your mind immediately shifts to what could derail your progress. It can also bring to light unconscious attachments and beliefs, such as resisting wealth if you were raised to think wealthy people are morally corrupt.

Section: 1, Chapter: 4

Author: Brianna Wiest

Matrescence is the process of becoming a mother, a transition as profound as adolescence. It involves dramatic psychological, social, and physical changes, yet remains largely unexplored in medical and cultural conversations.

In pregnancy and early motherhood, a woman experiences neural reorganization, hormonal surges, and identity shifts that fundamentally alter her relationship to herself and the world. Despite being one of the most significant transitions in adult life, matrescence is barely acknowledged, leaving mothers isolated in their experience and vulnerable to mental health challenges.

Section: 1, Chapter: 1

Author: Lucy Jones

In a meta-analysis of pregnancy literature, researchers found that the physical and emotional challenges of the postnatal period were 'minimally acknowledged or simply ignored.' One major pregnancy book dedicated just 0.08% to maternal care after birth, focusing primarily on cosmetic concerns like hair loss and weight loss.

This erasure extends beyond literature into healthcare systems. A 2018 study found that most women leaving hospital after birth were unaware of risk factors for maternal complications, with over 60% not knowing that pregnancy-related problems can occur for up to a year after delivery.

This systematic neglect represents what researchers call 'a form of misogynist oppression' where mothers cannot make sense of their own experiences because the world is presented to them in a deceptive fashion.

Section: 1, Chapter: 3

Author: Lucy Jones

One key function of REM sleep and dreaming is to help process difficult emotional experiences from waking life. REM sleep:

• Reduces the emotional charge of "painful, even traumatic" experiences
• Disentangles the emotion from the factual details of the memory
• Allows the emotional memory to be stored without the same degree of emotional distress

The mechanism works by:

• Reactivating emotional memory circuits during REM sleep when stress neurochemicals like noradrenaline are suppressed
• Allowing the brain to re-process the experience in this neutral, "safe" environment
• Stripping the memory of its emotional charge so it can be filed away with less distress

Evidence shows people who are able to achieve REM sleep and dream about emotional experiences after a trauma have better long-term mental health outcomes. They are less likely to develop PTSD, depression and anxiety.

Section: 3, Chapter: 10

Author: Matthew Walker

The human mind is "antifragile," meaning it actually gets better with adversity. Like a rock becoming a diamond under pressure or an immune system strengthening after exposure to germs, the mind requires stimulation in the form of challenges.

If you deny yourself any real challenges, your brain will compensate by creating problems to overcome. But these manufactured problems offer no reward - they just leave you battling yourself endlessly.

The cultural obsession with chasing happiness and shielding ourselves from anything triggering actually weakens us mentally. Those who can't help creating problems in their minds have often ceased creative control of their lives, moving into the passenger seat and feeling that life happens to them rather than being shaped by their actions.

Section: 1, Chapter: 4

Author: Brianna Wiest

Loneliness affects new mothers at alarming rates, with studies indicating between 28-90% of new mothers experience it. Half of all depressed new mothers believe isolation is the main cause, and around 38% of mothers spend more than eight hours alone each day.

This isolation is historically unprecedented. For millennia, women and children were part of 'actively busy social clusters' with communal work and shared caregiving. Today's mothers face barriers to social connection including shame about perceived inadequacy, fear of judgment, and culturally enforced silence about the challenges of motherhood.

The health implications are severe: loneliness is as damaging as smoking up to fifteen cigarettes daily and significantly increases risk for mental illness. Immigrant, younger, and lower-income mothers face even greater isolation risks.

Section: 3, Chapter: 7

Author: Lucy Jones

Your emotional backlog is like your email inbox. When you experience emotions, it's as though you're getting little messages stacking up one at a time. If you don't open them, you end up overlooking crucial information.

Emotions are physical experiences that must be released. When not felt, they become embodied - literally stuck in your body. This happens through a "motor component," where emotions create micro-muscular activation before you even have a chance to suppress them.

We often store pain and tension in the body area where an expression began but was never completed. This is because neurologically, the part of your brain that regulates emotions (anterior cingulate) is next to the premotor area, creating an immediate physical response when feelings are processed.

Section: 1, Chapter: 5

Author: Brianna Wiest

Studies by Dr. Jim Coan and colleagues demonstrate the powerful impact of close relationships on regulating emotions and stress responses:

• Happily married women showed less stress response in their brain when holding their husband's hand during a mildly painful experience
• Unhappily married individuals showed higher blood pressure in their spouse's presence compared to being alone

When our innate attachment needs are not met, both our emotional and physical health are compromised. The lesson is to choose a partner carefully as they will literally shape our mind and body.

Section: 0, Chapter: 2

Author: Amir Levine, Rachel Heller

When Henry learned his treatment of injectables had failed, he became despondent. "The light that had once shone brightly in my eyes was now dimmed," he wrote. "As the months went on, the isolation grew more profound." There was no more rapping and dancing in the hallways, wearing his sunglasses upside down to make the other patients laugh. He knew now. He wasn't just falling behind his peers; he was saying goodbye to the world at the age of eighteen.

By the spring of 2020, Henry and his friend Thompson were both in decline. To Henry, Thompson was not only a friend and mentor but also, as Henry once called him, "a ghost of my future." And then one morning, Thompson was gone. "My friend lost his life. And after he died, something told me: 'You are next, Henry. You are next.'" Henry felt certain that his death was imminent.

Section: 5, Chapter: 17

Author: John Green

Modern culture's obsession with productivity creates a toxic relationship with time. Le Cunff describes interviewing numerous "recovering productivity junkies" who shared similar stories—engineers, startup founders, educators, nurses, and executives who had pushed themselves to burnout through relentless execution.

This pressure to maximize productivity stems from multiple sources. Culturally, being productive is seen as a moral imperative; as management theorist Peter Drucker noted, "On [productivity] rest all of the economic and social gains of the 20th century." Growing up with role models who highly value productivity—praising grades over effort, obsessing over learning new skills, packing activities into weekends—can cause us to internalize this mindset.

Major life transitions can also trigger productivity mania as we seek control during uncertain times. One community member described meticulously logging even his limited leisure time on spreadsheets after starting a high-stress startup job. For neurodivergent individuals, productivity can become a fixation, leading to endless research of tools and techniques that paradoxically become distractions from actual work.

Section: 2, Chapter: 4

Author: Anne-Laure Le Cunff