Sunday, 30 August 2026

Doing random acts of kindness is good for you

Mandy Oaklander | August 30, 2026

Want to be kinder, but don’t know how to start? In our Sunday read, Yale trauma psychologist Joan M. Cook offers some fun ideas. Catch you later, readers…I’m off to take my kid on a kindness walk.

TODAY’S TOPICS

The kindness boomerang
Got a question for us?
A troubling football stat

SUNDAY READ

Doing random acts of kindness is good for you

By Joan M. Cook

I’m the kind of person who shares a genuine compliment often, telling someone who is standing behind me in the airport line that I love their sneakers or letting one of my daughter’s friends know they have a beautiful smile. I also like to do nice things for people, like bringing the veterans that I work with doughnuts and coffee every Monday morning.

I learned to be kind from my grandfather who raised me. He drove the nuns from my Catholic grammar school to their doctors’ appointments, and he shared smiles and jokes with grocery store clerks, neighborhood kids, and almost every soul whose path he crossed. I wanted to follow in his footsteps and engage as often as I could in my own random acts of kindness. I recognized that being kind and giving selflessly to others made me feel good as well, but it wasn’t until recently, 25 years into my career as a trauma psychologist, that I learned about the science behind random acts of kindness.

Research indicates that engaging in random acts of kindness boosts happiness in both those who give and those who receive. A systematic review of 24 studies indicated that performing acts of kindness boosts the well-being of the giver.

Read the full essay here.

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WHAT WE’RE READING

At least one in four professional U.S. football players may have the neurodegenerative disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), Jeffrey Kluger reports for TIME.
Don’t play “invite chicken” with your new neighbor. Aaron Hurst at Greater Good explains why extending a social invitation to someone new is good for both of you.
New data suggest that many women have PTSD after giving birth—but they’re either misdiagnosed as having postpartum depression or not treated at all, writes Dennis Campbell at the Guardian.

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Saturday, 29 August 2026

Is therapy hurting our relationships?

Mandy Oaklander | August 29, 2026

Therapists are too eager to encourage people to go “no contact” with their parents and distance themselves from siblings, spouses, and friends, writes Harvard psychologist David H. Rosmarin in a provocative Saturday read for TIME.

Not only is it damaging, he writes, but it’s also a missed opportunity. “Relationships themselves teach basic psychological capacities such as regulating emotions, tolerating disappointment, and negotiating differences—skills which therapy is supposed to cultivate."

TODAY’S TOPICS

When conflict isn’t toxic
Got a question for us?
Why foodborne illness is surging

SATURDAY READ

Therapy has a relationship problem

By David H. Rosmarin

Some relationships need to end.

Years ago, I treated a woman whose husband was deliberately trying to drive her toward suicide while attempting to extract money from her family. What struck me was not only the cruelty of his behavior, but his complete lack of empathy or remorse for the harm he was causing. Leaving him was necessary, and the woman is now happily remarried.

Most troubled relationships look nothing like that. They involve disappointment, resentment, misunderstanding, conflicting needs, old wounds, and people who have never learned how to reconcile after hurting one another. In more than 20 years of clinical practice, that extreme case remains the only time I directly recommended divorce.

Mental-health professionals have become remarkably good at helping clients identify unhealthy relationships. We have a sophisticated vocabulary for boundaries, trauma, toxicity, narcissism, gaslighting, and emotional safety. But I worry that we are far less effective at helping people navigate difficult but meaningful connections.