The mind creates a narrative self, a kind of ongoing story about who we are. But this narrative is a construct, no less than a novel—and like a novel, it can be rewritten.

The mind creates a narrative self, a story we tell about who we are, and we defend that story even when evidence suggests it is false. We are, in essence, unreliable narrators of our own lives.

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The Profile: The members of the gay tech mafia & the conservative Cosmo

Our brains sometimes get stuck in a loop that replays the moment like a broken record. And because we want that simplicity, one moment can dominate our entire life — for the rest of our life.

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The Profile: The members of the gay tech mafia & the conservative Cosmo

Our brains sometimes get stuck in a loop that replays the moment like a broken record. In a recent New York Times feature, writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner says this about trauma: "Happy, well-adjusted people are all different. The traumatized are exactly alike."

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The Profile: The members of the gay tech mafia & the conservative Cosmo

Our bodies and brains have not evolved to reliably differentiate a rape at knife point from a job loss that threatens us with financial ruin or from the dismantling of our world by our parents' divorce. It's wrong, but explain that to your poor, battered autonomic nervous system.