Cort is a counseling graduate student and social media manager who writes about games, identity, and the complicated ways people heal. His work explores how therapy, creativity, and neurodivergence intersect to make life more livable.
Disney
Villains are often framed as problems to be removed. In stories, they’re defeated, exiled, or destroyed so the world can return to order. In real life, we tend to apply the same logic internally. When anger, control, resentment, manipulation, fear, or emotional distance surface within us, we’re quick
Disney
Inner child work often falters at the point where abstraction overtakes experience. People are asked to imagine internal parts, emotional needs, and developmental patterns without being given anything concrete to hold onto, which can leave the work feeling distant or inaccessible, especially for those who think relationally, visually, or spatially.
Avatar Frontiers of Pandora
Why Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora? In the bioluminescent forests of Pandora, a different kind of healing story unfolds. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora does not follow a chosen hero destined for greatness. Instead, it traces the journey of a Sarentu—one of a group of Na'vi children taken from
Football
How a video game recruiting visit activated real perfectionism—and became an unexpected lesson in sitting with discomfort. I know my pattern with perfectionism. Something appears—an opportunity, a challenge, a situation where I could fail—and my brain immediately jumps to the worst possible outcome. I might fail, and
Avatar
There's a unique satisfaction that comes from watching fog lift off a game map. Not the dramatic fog of a horror game, thick with threat, but the gray of unexplored territory in an open-world game. The kind that says: you haven't been here yet. In
Dragon Age
How you respond to companion disapproval might say more about you than your actual choices do. The Notification You know the moment. You have just made a decision—sided with the mages, challenged someone's worldview, or simply said the honest thing instead of the diplomatic one. The screen
Disney Dreamlight Valley
Part I: Game Foundations Why Dreamlight Valley? At first glance, Disney Dreamlight Valley looks like a cozy life simulation wrapped in nostalgia. Familiar characters, gentle tasks, a village to restore. But beneath its pastel palette lies something rarer: a space where adults can reconnect with wonder without explanation or apology.
Red Dead Redemption 2
When Red Dead Redemption 2 begins, you meet Arthur Morgan in the middle of a blizzard with no time for philosophy. He is cold, bleeding, loyal to a fault, and trained to survive the only way he has ever known. His world is already collapsing. His beliefs are fixed. His
Disney Dreamlight Valley
Inner child work is one of those ideas people hear about long before they understand it. Therapists introduce it. TikTok simplifies it. Self-help books wrap it in jargon. Many people end up smiling and nodding along while thinking, what exactly am I supposed to do with this information? The
Inner Child Work
This piece is the first in a series exploring how Disney Dreamlight Valley can support inner child work. The goal is simple. We are taking a therapeutic concept that often feels vague or intimidating and translating it into something tangible, playful, and deeply accessible. Video games offer an unexpected but
Autism
A Personal Starting Point For years, my therapist gently tried to introduce me to “inner child work.” For years, I refused it with impressive consistency. I shrugged it off, quietly rolled my eyes, or redirected to something more concrete. I assumed the resistance meant I simply found the concept ridiculous,
Game Guide
Using Video Games as a Safe Space to Explore Identity Why Games? For many clients, particularly those exploring gender identity, the body can feel like contested ground, something that has been interpreted, disciplined, or denied by others. Video games, by contrast, offer a rare form of agency over embodiment. They