Welcome to The Meeting Post

“The first casualty of trauma is complexity.” - Renos Papadopoulos

Look around at the world, and it’s hard not to notice that it has lost its nuance. The landscape of our discourse and our connections has been flattened into an oversimplified terrain.

For those of us with matrix-like minds and hearts, this world can feel like an alien planet. It’s a place where deep, intricate thoughts are reduced to soundbites, and nuanced emotions are sorted into simple boxes of "good" or "bad". This carries with it a felt experience—a persistent sense of dissonance that leaves us feeling like we're operating on a different frequency from everyone else.

What we are witnessing is a global trauma response. In the face of constant systemic harm and overwhelm, nuance becomes a casualty. Holding complexity requires energy and distress tolerance—resources our exhausted world struggles to spare. (But hey, at least it's global and we're all in it together!)

This simplified world creates a profound developmental gap: it rarely offers tools to hold our own complexity, let alone share it with others. Faced with an inner world that feels too intense and intricate to manage without a map, we adopt the world's strategy—we reject what we cannot hold. We trim away the inconvenient emotions, the nuanced thoughts, the "too-muchness" of our being.

This act of self-rejection widens the chasm between our authentic self and the curated self we perform. And here lies the painful feedback loop: the very act of hiding our complexity is what keeps us ignorant of what’s truly widening the gap between us and others. We feel the loneliness but cannot see its source, because the source is the part of us we've learned to hide.

The Rhythm of Rupture: Burnout and Boreout

Living in this state of unresolved rupture, we fluctuate between two exhausting poles: burnout and boreout.

Burnout is the sound of us trying to force a connection across the chasm. We over-function in a world that’s under-functioning, using our skills to constantly over-extend. We translate, we code-switch, we hold the complexity for everyone else, hoping to be seen.

And then comes the collapse.

This yields boreout. After the exhausting work, we disengage and disconnect from our own vitality. This deepens the isolation, now doubled as we feel like a stranger to ourselves, until we can eventually build up the energy to return to over-functioning. Rinse and repeat.

Each cycle leaves the rupture a little wider.

Connection is the Medicine

If disconnection is the wound, then connection is the medicine. And the healing happens at what we can call meeting posts.

A meeting post is not a single place; it is any point of genuine connection. There are infinite meeting posts, each with different criteria and often found in different places. The skill lies in understanding how to find, (co-)create, and honor them.

There are intrapersonal meeting posts, where we connect with ourselves. This might be the quiet moment you finally understand a long-held pattern, the act of journaling that untangles a knot in your soul, or the courage to simply sit with a difficult emotion without judgment.

And there are interpersonal meeting posts, where we connect one another. This is the conversation where you feel truly seen, the collaborative project where your complexity is an asset, not a liability, or the silent, profound communion you feel standing in a forest.

Our work is to learn how to build more of these connection points in our own lives, with more ease and clarity, to facilitate much-needed repair.

Healing is a Byproduct of Connection

I am writing this because we are neurokin. I'm like you. And the people I invite into this space are like us, too. This is not a lecture from an expert on a pedestal; it is a letter from a fellow traveler.

There is a fundamental principle that guides this work:

Healing is a byproduct of connection.

The learnings, strategies, and tools shared here are meant to do one thing: facilitate the reconnection to ourselves in spaces that allow us to safely reconnect with each other. We need spaces that let us unfurl and unfold in all our complexity, spaces that can hold nuance without imploding or exploding.

Whether that space is found in the quiet solitude of an article, in a group gathering online, or out in the big, wild world, the goal is the same. As we learn how to hold ourselves and each other with resilience, kindness, curiosity, and loving care, that connection becomes stronger. As we learn how to remove the boundaries that keep out what we’re sorely missing and add boundaries where we’re vulnerable to harm, we fortify the bonds even further. We become more resourced, more energized, and find we have more capacity to show up in the world and do the work we are yearning to do.

A Refuge for Complex Thinkers and Feelers

This is a place of depth and practicality. Here, you will find:

• Articles and explorations that delve into ethos and philosophical principles but are dedicated to bridging the awareness-action gap, so you can integrate these learnings into real, tangible change.
• Frameworks, tools, and strategies designed for and tested by complex thinkers and feelers, delivered with the nuance they deserve.
• Varied formats of engagement, from written pieces and podcasts to live community opportunities where we can meet in the depths together.

It is imperative that people like us reconnect. The world feels like it’s on a perilous trajectory, and the oversimplified thinking that got us here will not get us out. The minds and hearts that can hold complexity without collapsing—minds and hearts like yours—are the ones that will find the ways to turn the Titanic of this global mess, one thoughtful initiative at a time.

This space is meant to equip you with the tools to reconnect with yourself and your purpose. And when you’re ready, it is a place to find collaboration and solidarity with others who can help you have the impact that only you can have in this world. People like you. People like us.

It takes a village. Welcome to yours.