Radical self-worth means valuing yourself without performance or perfection. Learn the psychology behind it and how to practice it daily.

Part One: He Stopped Closing the Bathroom Door (whether I liked it or not) Photo by Steven Ungermann Picture it: Northeast Ohio, 2025. It's late summer. Hajime and I just moved in together and start living that sweet, sweet life we'd been talking about for months. It. Was. Perfect. Then it happened. Without warning. Without preamble: he didn't close the bathroom door. There was no gradual easing into the dissolving boundaries of shared plumbing. Just--bam--we were suddenly living in a home where every bodily function echoes like a chorus of unfiltered intimacy.

It's enough. I'm proud of you.

Radical self-worth means valuing yourself without performance or perfection. Learn the psychology behind it and how to practice it daily.

You don’t have to prove your value by being “high functioning.” Learn why worth isn’t tied to productivity, how hustle culture harms us, and ways to embrace your inherent value—no matter what.

Learn how the “name it to tame it” technique can help you manage stress, anxiety, and emotional overwhelm. Simple, science-backed strategies for emotional awareness and regulation.

Learn why guilt often shows up when you start setting boundaries, and how to stop confusing self-respect with selfishness.

Explore the real difference between kindness vs niceness—why “being nice” can become self-erasure, and how true kindness requires honesty, boundaries, and courage.

Journaling for mental health helps you process emotions, reduce stress, and build self-awareness—no perfection required, just honesty.

Rest isn’t laziness—it’s biology. Learn why rest is essential, not indulgent, and how reclaiming it protects your health, boundaries, and peace.

So many gay men learned to treat their emotions like currency. Love became a budget. Honesty, a luxury. Every expression of need had to be weighed against the risk of rejection. That’s not emotional intelligence. Emotional repression becomes emotional survival. And it keeps us trapped in scarcity, afraid to spend anything of ourselves. But your feelings aren’t liabilities. They’re signals, pointing to truth, safety, and the places you still belong. We grow up learning to itemize our hearts. To put tenderness on layaway. To calculate vulnerability like rent. But here’s the truth: …

There’s a kind of shapeshifting that doesn’t require magic — just the slow erosion of self. One facet of people-pleasing: the art of changing your opinion to keep the peace. Laughed at a joke that made your skin crawl. Bit your tongue because the truth might have made someone uncomfortable. And when you left the room, you weren’t sure what you actually believed anymore. That’s the quiet heartbreak of people pleasing. It turns you into a chameleon — blending so seamlessly into other people’s colors that you start to disappear.

Follow Tal Stineman and explore their bibliography from Amazon's Tal Stineman Author Page.

ALT: a man in a suit is holding his head and says im fine

Burnout can leave us feeling shattered—but what if our cracks were where the light enters? Explore how the Japanese art of kintsugi offers a new way to think about healing and wholeness after burnout.

eing “high functioning” often means performing wellness while quietly falling apart. Here’s why it’s time to stop proving your worth through performance—and start healing instead.

Not sure whether plotting your story or just start writing is the move? Here’s how to tell if you’re a plotter, a pantser, or somewhere in between—and why the best approach might be both.

Wondering if your creative idea is worth pursuing? Learn how to tell if your idea is “good enough,” and why the real question is whether it’s yours. Keywords: good ideas, creative process, self-doubt,...

Struggling to start your novel? Here’s how to move past fear, perfectionism, and distractions so you can finally begin writing your book—and keep going when it gets hard.