How I Learned to Trust in Therapy—Even Without Homework
It was the form of therapy I feared that changed me for the better.
This is DATA, a monthly column by Angela Chen on numbers, nerdery, and what it means to live an evidence-based life.
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How to Make Yourself Happy and Remarkably Less DisturbableIt could be worseSeveral of my other loved ones could be dead.
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Angela Chen (@chengela) is a science journalist and writer. Her reporting and essays have also been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Paris Review, Aeon Magazine, Pacific Standard, Smithsonian, Hazlitt, Electric Literature, and more. She is the author of Ace, on asexuality, from Beacon Press.
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Writing a Book About Asexuality Taught Me to Look for a Fate Beyond Numbers
I learned to reevaluate the meaning of ‘normal’ in relationships, and also my habit of reflexively turning to data.
How I Learned to Tell Signal from Noise and Appreciate Calm
It can be easy to confuse real emotion with the shiny drama enfolding it. Sometimes grand gestures are signs of grand feeling—sometimes they’re not.
On Being Young, Scrappy, and (Sometimes) Satisfied
Remain forever hungry, or enjoy the tried-and-true? Sometimes, I learned, it’s okay to double down on the life you have.
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Is It Possible to Truly Know Yourself? (Probably Not—and That’s Okay.)
There is opportunity in forcibly rewriting a story, in trying out identities that might not feel true at first.
How I Learned to Reconcile the Distance Between Experience and Memory
As my mother loses the ability to remember, I find myself playing with my own memory.
How We Create Personal Myths, and Why They Matter
My parental separation was vastly less traumatic than what is happening to children at the border. But this narrative lives inside me.