For more than 17 years, I suffered from depression. I’ve been on all types of medication. Most recently, a combination of three: Wellbutrin, escitalopram, and Xanax. Medication had become part of my life, and I made peace with needing it. I understood there was a chemical imbalance in my brain, one I was likely born with, and accepted the reality of needing medication—quite possibly for the rest of my life. It wasn’t until after I stopped drinking, and my anxiety and depression began to ease, that I sought to understand the connection....

When we step outside of our comfort zones, we risk being wrong, disliked, rejected, damned, misunderstood, or exposed. This is the price we all pay on the path to authenticity. It’s easy to spot when someone is stepping outside their comfort zone in the public arena when we look at well-known speakers, authors, and athletes like these. But heroic acts of “living free” and risking the potential of exposure, failure, rejection, and disapproval are actually happening all around us, all the time, with the people you know and love the most....

While this may seem like something you can do on occasion, that’s not exactly the case. We talked with professional makeup artist Jenny Patinkin and board-certified dermatologist Hadley King to get the inside scoop on how to clean your makeup brushes, what to use, and why it’s so important. Let’s get into it. Beyond the dangers to your skin, dirty brushes can prevent you from maximizing your makeup looks. “If too many oils and pigments build up on them, not only are they not going to give you a true color payoff, but they can also lose their flexibility, which means that they won’t move fluidly enough to smoothly and evenly blend your makeup,” Patinkin explained....

Take it from me—I recently broke up with a boyfriend of seven years, and while I’m finally in a good place, I’m admittedly still rebuilding and healing. After all, it upended everything I thought I knew at the time: a shared life that seemingly stretched out infinitely in its familiarity, a bustling home together in my favorite city in the world, the person I was and what I thought I wanted....

As psychiatrist Anna Yusim, M.D., explains to mbg, the idea of manifestation was popularized by Rhonda Byrne’s book and movie, The Secret, describing the universal principle that our thoughts create our reality. “We are what we think, consciously and unconsciously. In other words, what we attract into our lives reflects the contents of our mind,” she explains. Or as spiritual author Shannon Kaiser puts it, “We are all like magnets, both reflecting and attracting what we hold in our thoughts....

Some people move through these five cycles quietly. Others feel compelled to act out a (potentially explosive) drama. Many of us do a little of both. However they manifest, these developmental stages are built into our relationships. The first stage, fueled by a delicious and powerful love potion, is marked by changes in the brain chemistry itself. People become obsessed with the wonder and delight of their new partner. We see only the best in our lover....

If any of this rings a bell for you, know that you’re already moving in the right direction. Self-awareness is the first step to healing. Ahead, we’ve gathered therapists’ advice on how to heal from so-called clinginess and how to become more secure in your relationships. However, these “clingy” behaviors often tend to do the very opposite, alienating and ultimately pushing away the very person who the “clingy” partner is desperate to keep close....