Cruel Compendium #52 ♈

The rise of therapy-speak and the friendship recession

Apr 18, 2023

Did y’all know I write a birding newsletter? Here’s some other bird-related content I wrote for Flying Colors about why pesticides are so harmful to birds and the fascinating tech behind Merlin, an app that magically lets you ID birds by picture or sound.

Last week, I wrote about the healing power of swimming, and my personal mantra to Just Jump In.

And ICYMI, I wrote about the messy ethics of background checking your online dates and the state of women’s safety while dating for Cosmopolitan.

Hope you all are enjoying spring as much as I am.

On to the links!

What I’m reading

Is therapy-speak making us selfish? By Rebecca Fishbein. I’ve been thinking about this one for a week now. Where is the balance between putting ourselves first and having worthwhile (and often horribly uncomfortable) confrontations with the people we care about? When does self-care become an excuse to let other people down without any accountability?

Scientists warn of a “friendship recession” — and I’m part of it by Addie Page

It takes about 11 different encounters that are each three hours long, over the course of six months or so, to turn an acquaintance into an actual friend. So, you can make new friends as an adult — if you have three-hour chunks of free time available and can find some poor sap whose personality you actually like with the same amount of free time and convince them to all that time with you. For six months straight.

Ms. Petersen went up the mountain herself by Anne Helen Petersen

The key, I find, is to spend enough time in one’s mind to recognize its actual cravings. It’s worth asking: Do I want to be alone, or do I just want to feel less lonely when I’m with other people? If the people who surround me subtract so much from my sense of self, does that mean I need to be cultivating a different community? Do I hate doing things alone, or do I just hate how often I have no choice in the matter?

Love is Blind is hell on earth by Katie Warren. A juicy, sad dispatch from the reality of reality TV, with no spoilers from the new season.

The gross invasion of my privacy I didn’t see coming by Sari Botton. New fear unlocked: Botton had her private journal subpoenaed.

The Russians took their children. These mothers went and got them back. By Carlotta Gall and Oleksandr Chubko (gift link)