Author: Overcoming Adversity | Buteau’s Odyssey

Why does emotional neglect make you feel like you’re running on empty? It’s an excellent question. Not long after my first book, Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect, came out, I was interviewed on NPR. The first thing the interviewer asked me was, “Why the name Running on Empty? Where did that come from?” To be honest, I was somewhat unprepared for this question, and I stumbled a bit. The only answer I could think of at first was: “Because that’s what childhood emotional neglect makes you feel.” It made such intuitive sense to me that I had…

“Boys will be boys,” chuckles society. Girls, on the other hand, are painted as “Mean Girls” — these ruthlessly manipulative, micro-aggressive cafeteria demons. But, despite stereotypes, young boys can be just as cruel. Charlie Polinger’s sleepaway thriller, The Plague, is authentic in its portrayal of traumatizing male-on-male schoolyard harassment. It’s not quite 2017’s gobsmacking Super Dark Times, but speaking a similar language. Super dark in spurts, yet lacking as the horrors of competitive water sports and hurtful childish pranks culminate into a lesson about prematurity and self-discovery.  We view childhood through the lens of the Tom Lerner Water Polo Camp. Pre-teen boys train…

I’ve watched this pattern repeat across organizations: a new technology, program, or policy launches with great enthusiasm. Budgets are approved. Dashboards go live. Reality sets in and momentum dies. When that happens, it’s tempting to blame “resistance.” But more often, the problem is simpler and more human: leaders are making decisions based on a version of reality that isn’t the one people are living. That gap is what I call the reality delta: the difference between what leaders assume is happening and what people experience as they try to get the work done. Reality Deltas at Work Reality deltas don’t…

Leaving is always an emotional act, not only at the moment of separation but often long before. The thought of leaving—whether it’s a job or an intimate relationship—comes from an underlying feeling: frustration over being overlooked, unshakeable loneliness, criticism that wounds your self-esteem, feeling dismissed, and having no voice. Bottom lines I remember reading a statement in a therapy text long ago this one-line statement: How you felt when you left home for the first time—whether going to college, getting married, or moving into an apartment with friends—becomes the emotional baseline for leaving other things in your life, such as…

With January approaching, bringing long, cold mornings and early sunsets, many will experience dips in mood. The excitement of the holiday season is behind us, often leaving bank balances bare and, worse, old and new familial issues that might have (re)emerged during time spent together. Coffee has been cited as one means of remedying the winter blues or variations of seasonal affective disorder (SAD). In one European-based survey, commissioned by the Institute for Scientific Information on Coffee (ISIC), 20% of respondents reported that a few cups of coffee a day improved their mood during the winter. The same report cites…

Week 17 of the NFL season is underway, and there are some key players dealing with injuries. Key offensive weapons such as Patriots running back TreVeyon Henderson and 49ers tight end George Kittle are trying to play through injury. Defensive stalwarts such as the Eagles’ Jalen Carter and the Colts’ Sauce Gardner will make their returns. Here’s who’s in and who’s out in Week 17.QB Josh Allen (Bills)Practice schedule: Limited-Limited-FullInjury: FootKickoff: 4:25 p.m. ETAllen will play in the Bills’ Week 17 game against the Eagles. He sustained a foot injury in Buffalo’s win over the Browns last week, but won’t miss any time.…

A24’s Mother Mary, arriving Spring 2026, is shaping up to be less a music drama and more a harrowing and spiritual reckoning. Directed by David Lowery (The Green Knight, 2021), the film stars Anne Hathaway as an untouchable pop icon whose private life fractures into something darker, stranger, and far more dangerous than her public image could ever allow.  Hathaway’s Mother Mary exists in two forms, and the trailer opens by introducing us to both. The first version is the version the world knows: luminous, ethereal, almost saintly beneath stage lights and beautiful makeup. But that illusion collapses quickly when…

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” —Marcel Proust The practice of rituals, notably within groups, stems from our most ancient instincts for connection and shared experience. Group rituals are part of how people harmonize their beliefs and behaviors with others. Historically, rituals have acted as a sort of social, cultural, or familial adhesive that facilitates bonding. The December holidays—Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and New Year’s typically evoke a variety of rituals—whether these involve setting up and decorating a Christmas tree, lighting a Hanukkah menorah, decorating the dinner table with the essential…

As a scientist and clinician, I’ve long been struck by how trauma, chronic pain, and addiction often travel together. For many patients, these conditions form a tangled knot that is difficult to unravel with traditional therapies. Most psychotherapeutic approaches treat trauma, pain, and addiction in isolation, yet what patients truly need is an integrated approach that addresses them simultaneously. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is highly prevalent among people with chronic pain and opioid use disorder (OUD), yet there are few evidence-based treatments designed to address this complex comorbidity. That’s why I’m excited to share results from our NIH-funded study, published…

Do you know why our brains can replay our most embarrassing moments from years ago in high resolution, but struggle to remember a compliment from last week? The reason is our brains’ tendency to hold onto negative thoughts more tightly than positive ones, referred to as the negativity bias. And this cognitive bias is often amplified by another co-occurring phenomenon researchers call the negative sentiment override. If you have experienced this too, you can take comfort in knowing that it’s not a unique personality quirk, but a phenomenon that’s been recorded and studied in evolutionary psychology for decades. This means…