The Empty Seat Project

08/27/2026

08/24/2026

Breaking the Doom-Scrolling Habit

Doom scrolling is usually less about a lack of self-control and more about a habit loop. Most people do not consciously decide, “I am going to scroll social media for the next forty-five minutes.” Instead, the pattern happens almost automatically: boredom, waiting, stress, or an uncomfortable feeling leads to reaching for the phone, which leads to opening social media, which provides a quick hit of novelty and stimulation. Before long, twenty or thirty minutes have passed. The goal, then, is not necessarily to eliminate your phone or social media altogether. It is to interrupt that automatic loop and create more opportunities to make a conscious choice.

One of the most useful places to start is by addressing the habit of picking up your phone and immediately opening social media. Make the process slightly more difficult. Move social media apps off your home screen, put them inside a folder, or move them to the last page of your phone. You can also log out of particularly problematic apps so that opening them requires an additional step. Turning off social media notifications can also make a significant difference because your phone is no longer constantly giving you reasons to check it. The goal is not to make social media inaccessible. Instead, you want to create just enough friction between picking up your phone and opening an app that you have a moment to realize what you are doing.

A particularly helpful question is, “Why am I opening my phone?” Before unlocking it, pause for a moment and identify what you actually want to accomplish. Maybe you want to send a text, check the weather, look at your calendar, or respond to an email. If you know why you are picking up the phone, do that specific thing and then put it down. If you realize you have no particular reason and simply reached for it out of habit, that is an opportunity to put it back down. This small pause can gradually weaken the automatic connection between boredom and social media.

Another important part of breaking the habit is having something else to do during the small moments of the day when you are bored or waiting. These moments can seem insignificant, but they provide hundreds of opportunities to reinforce the scrolling habit. Waiting for your coffee, standing in line at a store, sitting in a waiting room, waiting for your children, or having a few minutes before an appointment can all become triggers to reach for your phone. Instead of trying to tolerate these moments without any plan, create a list of alternatives. You might read a few pages of a book, practice a few Spanish words, listen to a song, stretch, take a short walk, write something in a journal, do a crossword puzzle, review your calendar, or simply look around and notice what is happening around you.

It can be helpful to create a specific “waiting list” for these moments. Put ten or fifteen small activities on the list that you genuinely enjoy and that can be completed in a few minutes. When you find yourself standing in line with the urge to scroll, you do not have to come up with an alternative on the spot. You can simply ask yourself, “What is one thing on my waiting list?” This works because you are not merely taking something away from yourself. You are giving your brain another source of stimulation or engagement.

When choosing alternatives, try to favor activities with a natural stopping point. Social media is designed around an endless stream of new content. There is always another video, another post, another comment, and another piece of information waiting for you. Reading two pages of a book, completing a crossword clue, practicing five vocabulary words, or listening to one song is different because the activity has a natural endpoint. This distinction between finite and infinite activities can be extremely useful. You want more activities that allow you to say, “I'm finished,” rather than activities that constantly ask, “What's next?”

It is also important not to fall into the trap of replacing one infinite feed with another. Someone might delete TikTok only to spend more time on Instagram, YouTube Shorts, Reddit, or another platform. The problem is not necessarily one particular application. The deeper issue is the constant availability of novelty. Intentional media consumption is different from infinite scrolling. Watching a particular twenty-minute video because you wanted to watch it is different from opening YouTube and allowing the algorithm to decide what you consume for the next hour. Whenever possible, favor media that you intentionally selected over media that continually presents you with something new.

Another strategy is to create designated times when you intentionally use social media. Rather than telling yourself that you are never allowed to scroll, you might decide that you will spend twenty minutes on social media after dinner. This can make social media feel like something you choose rather than something that fills every empty moment. You can even use a timer if necessary. The goal is to move social media from an automatic activity to an intentional one.

At the same time, it is worth practicing boredom itself. Many of us have become accustomed to having stimulation available every moment of the day. When we stand in line for ninety seconds, our brains immediately tell us that something should be happening. But nothing actually has to happen. You can wait for your coffee without looking at your phone. You can sit in a waiting room without scrolling. You can stand in line and simply let your mind wander. Initially, this may feel surprisingly uncomfortable. That discomfort does not necessarily mean something is wrong. You may simply be rediscovering your ability to tolerate periods of low stimulation.

Creating physical boundaries around your phone can make this easier. Establish certain places or activities where your phone simply does not belong. You might leave it across the room while working, keep it away from the table during meals, put it on the charger while watching television, or leave it outside the bedroom at night. These boundaries are helpful because they eliminate the need to make dozens of individual decisions throughout the day. Instead of repeatedly telling yourself not to check your phone, you have already created an environment where checking it is less convenient.

You can also experiment with making your phone less stimulating. Removing unnecessary apps, turning off notifications, and moving distracting applications out of sight can help. Some people find that switching their phone to grayscale makes social media less appealing because the colorful visual stimulation is removed. None of these strategies is magic on its own. Their value comes from making the automatic behavior slightly less rewarding and slightly more difficult.

Ultimately, the goal is not to become someone who never uses their phone. Phones are useful tools, and social media can be enjoyable when used intentionally. The goal is to regain the ability to decide when and why you use them. A useful rule is to never open your phone without knowing why you are opening it. If you pick it up because you need to send a message, send the message. If you need to check your calendar, check it. If you realize you have no particular reason and simply reached for it because you were bored, put it back down.

Breaking the doom-scrolling habit is therefore less about willpower and more about awareness, friction, and replacement. Make automatic scrolling slightly harder. Give yourself alternatives for those small moments of boredom. Create boundaries around when and where you use your phone. Practice tolerating periods of silence and inactivity. Most importantly, learn to notice the moment when your hand reaches for your phone before your brain has even decided what it wants. That tiny moment of awareness is where the habit begins to change.

08/14/2026

What a 2026 Yale Study Says About Medicare for All

A 2026 study from Yale researchers examined what might happen if the United States replaced its current healthcare system with a universal, single payer system similar to Medicare for All. Rather than simply asking whether everyone could receive health insurance, the researchers examined whether the country could provide comprehensive healthcare coverage to everyone while actually spending less money overall. Their model suggests that this could be possible.

The researchers estimated that a Medicare for All system could reduce total U.S. healthcare spending by approximately $1.04 trillion every year. This figure can be confusing because it does not mean that the federal government would suddenly have an additional $1 trillion available in its budget. In fact, federal spending would increase substantially because the government would take over many expenses that are currently paid by private insurance companies, employers, and individuals. The $1.04 trillion figure instead represents estimated savings for Americans and the healthcare system as a whole.

Currently, Americans pay for healthcare in many different ways, including insurance premiums, deductibles, copays, coinsurance, prescription costs, and taxes. Under a single payer system, many of these expenses would disappear or be substantially reduced, while government spending would increase. In other words, the government would spend more, but the country as a whole could spend less on healthcare.

A significant portion of the projected savings comes from administrative costs. The American healthcare system is extremely complicated, with hundreds of insurance companies that have different networks, billing requirements, formularies, claims systems, and authorization procedures. Doctors and hospitals have to employ people to communicate with insurance companies and manage claims, while insurance companies employ large numbers of people to process claims, manage networks, and administer benefits. Patients and employers also spend considerable time and money navigating this complicated system. The researchers believe that moving to a single payer system would eliminate much of this duplication and substantially reduce administrative spending.

Another major source of savings would come from prescription drug prices. The study assumes that a national single payer system could negotiate lower prices with pharmaceutical companies. Other wealthy countries generally pay considerably less for many prescription drugs than Americans do. A national healthcare system covering the entire population would have enormous purchasing power, which could potentially allow the government to negotiate significantly lower prices. The researchers included these projected reductions in drug costs when calculating the overall savings.

The study also assumes that hospitals and healthcare providers would receive lower payment rates than they currently receive from many private insurers. Private insurance companies often pay hospitals and physicians more than public programs such as Medicare. A single payer system could establish standardized payment rates and reduce these prices. This could produce substantial savings, although it is also one of the more controversial assumptions in the model. Lower reimbursement rates would reduce healthcare spending, but they could also reduce the revenue of hospitals and healthcare providers. How providers responded to those lower payments would therefore be an important factor in determining what would actually happen under such a system.

Interestingly, the researchers do not assume that universal healthcare would cause Americans to use less healthcare. They actually expect healthcare use to increase. Millions of Americans are currently uninsured or underinsured, and many avoid doctors because they cannot afford the cost. People may delay preventive care, skip medications, or postpone treatment until a health problem becomes more serious. If everyone had comprehensive coverage without significant financial barriers, more people would likely seek medical care.

That additional healthcare would cost money. Someone who currently avoids seeing a doctor because they cannot afford the visit might begin receiving regular checkups and treatment once they have comprehensive coverage. The researchers account for this increased healthcare use in their model. Their conclusion is that even after paying for the additional care people would use, the savings from lower administrative costs, cheaper prescription drugs, and lower provider payments would still outweigh the additional spending. This is how the researchers arrive at approximately $1.04 trillion in net annual savings.

The researchers also estimated that universal healthcare could prevent approximately 62,900 deaths every year. This estimate is based largely on existing research showing that people without adequate health insurance experience higher mortality rates. People who lack sufficient coverage are more likely to delay medical care, skip preventive services, go without medications, or allow health problems to become more serious. If everyone had comprehensive coverage, more people could receive preventive care and treatment earlier, potentially reducing the number of deaths caused by untreated or poorly managed medical conditions.

The US spends more on health care than any other nation, yet tens of millions of Americans are uninsured or underinsured, and coverage retractions enacted in 2025 are widening these gaps. The misalignment between the for-profit insurance architecture and optimal patient care, together with the ineff...

07/27/2026

Can We Learn Anything From Arguing with People on the Internet?

A few months ago, I made the questionable decision to argue with someone on Instagram. It happened in the comments of a video clip. The video was an old black-and-white movie clip in which a woman leaves her partner for another man. I'm sure there was much more context in the full film, but that wasn't really the point. The clip had been repurposed to support a familiar narrative, the kind often found in the manosphere, that women are inherently unfaithful and can't be trusted. It wasn't long before I found a comment that perfectly captured the sentiment: "All women's fantasies are some version of infidelity." I replied with a simple question: "What evidence do you have for that?"

Another commenter jumped into the conversation. We'll call him Andy. According to Andy, the evidence was obvious: dark romance novels have exploded in popularity, therefore women secretly desire infidelity and dangerous relationships. Dark romance, for those unfamiliar with it, is a genre that explores love through obsession, danger, moral ambiguity, and emotional intensity. I pointed out that bestselling books don't necessarily reflect what people want in real life. People enjoy horror movies without wanting to be chased by serial killers. Millions play violent video games without becoming violent. Someone who loves zombie stories probably doesn't want to wake up in a zombie apocalypse. None of those comparisons landed. Andy wasn't really responding anymore. He was performing. Every few minutes another notification appeared with another argument, another point, and another accusation that I was "coping."
As I watched the conversation spiral, I realized something. Public arguments rarely change minds. They're performances for an audience, not conversations between two people. So I sent Andy a direct message. It was simple: "Hey, I just wanted to check in. Is everything okay?" Everything changed. His tone softened immediately. He apologized for getting heated and admitted he becomes passionate about this subject. We continued talking privately, and eventually the conversation took a darker turn.

Andy cited research suggesting that many women report having fantasies involving SA. At first, I responded the way most people would. I questioned the study, challenged its methodology, and looked for flaws. He had an answer for every objection I raised. That's when I realized I was using the wrong skill set. I wasn't a debater. I was a therapist. Debates ask, "Who's right?" Therapy asks, "Why does this matter so much?" So I stopped arguing and started asking questions.

I became curious about how these beliefs would affect his future relationships. Thankfully, Andy was still single. He was also a college student. Eventually he told me he considered himself a radical Catholic and wanted a traditional marriage in which his wife would submit to him. Rather than assume I knew what he meant, I asked him to explain.
"I lead," he said. "She follows."
I asked another question. "Do you think a wife who submits is less likely to cheat?" He answered honestly. "Yes."
That answer revealed far more than any statistic or study ever could. The issue wasn't really submission. It was fear. If you can control someone, maybe they can't betray you. If you have authority over them, maybe they can't leave you. Suddenly, his logic made sense, not because it was healthy, but because it was protective. It was an attempt to solve the problem of insecurity through control.

Andy continued explaining why wives should submit, this time arguing that husbands sacrifice everything for their families. I asked him what "everything" meant. He struggled to define it. The pieces finally came together. In his mind, the husband's sacrifices created a debt that the wife repaid with obedience. His love became transactional. His effort became leverage. His insecurity became authority.

What saddened me wasn't simply his ideology. It was how deeply fear had shaped the way he viewed relationships. When you believe intimacy is dangerous, control begins to feel like safety. When you expect betrayal, equality feels risky. The poison wasn't simply in his beliefs; it was in the emotional foundation beneath them. Bias and distortion had become the tools he used to protect himself from information that might challenge his worldview. I realized there probably wasn't a perfect argument that would change his mind because his beliefs weren't being defended by logic alone. They were being defended by fear.

After the conversation ended, I sat quietly while my kids watched television in the other room. My first thought was about my daughter.
How do I help her recognize men like Andy?
How do I teach her to notice the warning signs?
How do I help her understand that love should never require surrendering her autonomy?
Then I chuckled. She's six years old, fiercely independent, and already hates being told what to do. She's a free spirit. Whoever she ends up with will quickly learn that partnership, not control, is the only relationship she'll accept.

Then my eyes drifted a few feet to the other side of the couch where my son was sitting. In that moment I realized I had been asking the wrong question. The better question wasn't how to protect my daughter from men like Andy. It was how to make sure my son never becomes someone like Andy.

How do I teach him that strength doesn't require control? How do I help him tolerate rejection without turning it into resentment towards women?
How do I teach him that vulnerability isn't weakness?
How do I help him become the kind of man who makes women feel safe, heard, respected, and free to be fully themselves?
Those are the questions that matter. They matter because raising emotionally healthy boys doesn't just create a safer world for women; it creates a better world for men. Men who don't need control are freer. Men who can tolerate vulnerability build deeper relationships. Men who don't fear equality experience greater intimacy. If we want healthier marriages, healthier families, and healthier communities, then this is the work, as fathers, we need to do. It's work worth doing, and it's work I hope to be part of.

07/20/2026

When Theology Endangers Victims: A Counselor's Response to John D. Street's Teaching on Domestic Violence

John D. Street serves as Chair of the Master of Arts in Biblical Counseling program and Professor of Biblical Counseling at The Master's University and Seminary. Although he has extensive theological education, he does not hold a graduate degree in counseling, psychology, marriage and family therapy, social work, or another state-licensed mental health profession.

John D. Street teaches that, "Is it wrong for a wife to separate from her husband... Yes, if her goal and purpose is to just simply get out of the trouble." He further argues that an abused spouse "needs to be with him... in order to win their spouse over to righteousness," adding that "sometimes it means hardship. Sometimes it means abuse. This is always the risk." According to Street, separation is generally justified only when the abusive spouse has demonstrated an intent to kill.

As a licensed marriage and family therapist, I find these statements deeply troubling because they fundamentally misunderstand the dynamics of domestic violence and prioritize preserving the relationship over protecting the victim.

The first problem is the assumption that an abused person's desire to "get out of the trouble" reflects a flawed motivation. In cases of domestic violence, "the trouble" is not ordinary marital conflict. It is violence, intimidation, coercion, and fear. Victims are often living under constant surveillance, threats, financial control, social isolation, and repeated physical assaults. Leaving such an environment is not abandoning a relationship over ordinary difficulties. It is an attempt to escape ongoing victimization.

Street's suggestion that an abused spouse should remain with an abusive partner in hopes of changing the abuser is equally problematic. Domestic violence is not primarily a communication problem, a conflict resolution problem, or a spiritual problem. It is an abuse problem. The responsibility for ending the violence rests entirely with the perpetrator. While meaningful change is possible, it requires accountability, long term behavioral change, and specialized intervention. Asking victims to remain exposed to abuse while hoping the perpetrator changes ignores what decades of research have demonstrated about coercive control.

Perhaps the most disturbing statement is, "Sometimes it means abuse. This is always the risk." Abuse should never be framed as an acceptable or expected cost of maintaining an intimate relationship. No ethical counseling model asks victims to tolerate ongoing violence in pursuit of preserving the relationship. The role of a mental health professional is to reduce harm, not normalize exposure to it.

Street's position also fails to distinguish between two fundamentally different forms of intimate partner violence. Researchers commonly distinguish between situational couple violence and coercive controlling violence, also referred to as intimate terrorism.

Situational couple violence occurs when conflict escalates into physical aggression. Although serious and unacceptable, it is generally not driven by one partner's systematic effort to dominate the other. Some couples experiencing this pattern may eventually be able to pursue reconciliation after the violence has ended, accountability has occurred, and both partners have engaged in intensive treatment.

Coercive controlling violence is an entirely different phenomenon. Here, violence serves as one component of a larger strategy of domination. The abusive partner controls the victim through intimidation, threats, surveillance, financial restriction, isolation, emotional degradation, and physical violence. Fear becomes the organizing principle of the relationship. This is not a dysfunctional relationship between equals. It is a pattern of ongoing victimization in which one partner exercises power through terror.
Treating these two forms of violence as though they require the same intervention is clinically dangerous. Encouraging someone experiencing intimate terrorism to remain in the relationship in hopes that the perpetrator will change ignores decades of empirical research. In coercive controlling relationships, continued proximity often increases, not decreases, the victim's risk.

Even more concerning is Street's suggestion that separation should generally be reserved for situations in which the abusive partner has demonstrated an intent to kill. This reflects a profound misunderstanding of lethality assessment. Domestic violence professionals do not wait until a perpetrator explicitly communicates homicidal intent before recommending protective action. They evaluate well established risk factors, including escalating violence, strangulation, stalking, threats, coercive control, obsessive jealousy, access to weapons, and previous assaults. These indicators allow clinicians to identify relationships at high risk for serious injury or homicide before it is too late.

Research has consistently shown that the period surrounding separation is one of the most dangerous stages of a coercive controlling relationship. Women are significantly more likely to be seriously injured or murdered after attempting to leave because separation threatens the abuser's sense of control. This fact is sometimes misunderstood as a reason to discourage separation. The opposite is true. It underscores why victims need comprehensive safety planning, legal protection when appropriate, domestic violence advocacy, and coordinated support while leaving.

As therapists, our ethical obligation is to prioritize client safety above preserving a relationship. In most relationship problems, therapists appropriately avoid encouraging separation and instead work toward repair when possible. Domestic violence is the exception. Once violence becomes part of the relationship, particularly within a pattern of coercive control, the clinical priority shifts from reconciliation to protection.

Ideas have consequences. When influential counseling educators teach that victims should generally remain with abusive partners unless the danger reaches an extraordinary threshold, those ideas inevitably shape the advice given by pastors, counselors, and lay helpers. The result can be that victims remain trapped in dangerous relationships longer than they otherwise would.

Domestic violence is not simply a marital problem. It is a public health issue with potentially lethal consequences. Any counseling approach that minimizes the need for separation in cases of ongoing coercive controlling violence fails to reflect what decades of psychological research have taught us about abuse and victim safety.

07/01/2026

Perspective-Taking and Privilege: A Missing Piece of Empathy

I was listening to an interview with actor Sterling K. Brown on the That Was Us podcast when he made an observation about privilege that has stayed with me. He was discussing racism and described a feature of privilege that I think is worth examining. Importantly, he framed it not as an attack on anyone, but as an observation about a skill that some people may not be required to develop.

His point was that many people from marginalized groups learn to understand the perspectives of dominant groups as a matter of survival. Women often become highly attuned to men's emotions, motivations, and reactions. People of color frequently learn to anticipate how white people may perceive them. Q***r individuals often become experts in navigating heterosexual norms and expectations. Members of marginalized groups develop these skills because misunderstanding the dominant group's perspective can carry social, professional, emotional, or even physical consequences.

By contrast, individuals who belong to dominant social groups may move through much of life without needing to develop the same level of perspective-taking. If society is largely built around your experiences, values, and assumptions, there is less pressure to learn how the world looks through someone else's eyes. This is not a moral failing. It is not evidence that someone is selfish or uncaring. Rather, it may reflect a skill that was never demanded by their environment.

This observation is not exclusive to white men. Privilege exists in many forms, and anyone can develop blind spots when they are not required to consider perspectives outside their own. However, because white men have historically occupied many positions of social, political, and economic power in Western societies, this pattern can appear more frequently in that group.

As a couples therapist, I often observed this dynamic in relationships. In many heterosexual couples, wives possessed a remarkably detailed understanding of their husbands' inner worlds. They could describe their partner's fears, insecurities, motivations, stressors, and emotional triggers with impressive accuracy. They had often spent years paying close attention to these details because relationships, parenting, and social expectations encouraged them to do so.

The reverse was not always true. Many husbands loved their wives deeply and genuinely wanted the relationship to succeed, yet they struggled to articulate their partner's emotional experiences with the same level of detail. When asked what their wife was feeling beneath her frustration or criticism, they often had difficulty answering. It wasn't necessarily because they lacked empathy. More often, they had not developed the habit of consistently stepping into their partner's perspective.

This distinction matters because empathy is not simply caring about someone. Empathy requires the ability to imagine how another person experiences the world. Perspective-taking is one of the foundational skills that makes empathy possible. When perspective-taking is underdeveloped, people may unintentionally minimize, dismiss, or misunderstand the experiences of others. They may assume that their own interpretation of events is the only reasonable one.

The consequences can be significant. In relationships, a lack of perspective-taking can leave one partner feeling unseen or emotionally alone. In workplaces, it can create misunderstandings and reduce collaboration. On a societal level, it can make it difficult to understand the realities faced by people whose experiences differ from our own.

The encouraging news is that perspective-taking is a skill, not a fixed trait. Like any skill, it can be strengthened through practice. It begins with curiosity. Instead of assuming we know why someone feels the way they do, we can ask questions. We can listen without immediately defending ourselves. We can become interested in experiences that differ from our own.

One of the most powerful questions we can ask is: "What might this situation look like from their perspective?" That question alone can open the door to deeper empathy, stronger relationships, and a broader understanding of the world.

Ultimately, the goal is not guilt or blame. The goal is growth. The more perspectives we can hold, the more connected we become to the people around us. Empathy is not simply an emotion; it is a skill built through the practice of seeing beyond ourselves.