About
Hi, I'm Joelle.
Psychology Master's student. Creator of Really Not That Deep. Deeply interested in why people do what they do — especially when they don't understand it themselves.
Psychology Master's student. Creator of Really Not That Deep. Deeply interested in why people do what they do — especially when they don't understand it themselves.
There's a version of psychology that lives in academic journals — rigorous, careful, important. And there's a version that lives on social media — oversimplified, often inaccurate, sometimes harmful.
Really Not That Deep exists in the space between them. The research is real. The language is human. The goal is to give you a framework for understanding yourself that's actually grounded in something — not just vibes.
I started this because I kept noticing that the people who understood themselves the most weren't always the ones whose lives were actually changing. Insight wasn't the missing piece. Something else was — and that something is the relationship you have with yourself.
That's what this is built around. And it's built with real care for the person on the other side of it.
Most of the change people are looking for isn't about doing more or figuring out more. It's about changing your relationship to yourself — the way you understand your own patterns, the way you respond when things get hard, the way you decide who you're becoming.
I'm a psychology Master's student — not a licensed psychologist, therapist, or psychological associate. If you're struggling, please reach out to a qualified mental health professional.
Understanding your patterns is not the same as changing them. A lot of people — myself included — have spent significant time analyzing why they respond the way they do, and not nearly enough time doing something different in the actual moment.
What the research keeps pointing toward is that change is a present-moment problem. You don't build a different version of yourself by planning to — you build it through the choices you make right now, before you feel ready, while the discomfort is still present. Most of the content here is oriented around that idea. Not just understanding the pattern, but what it actually looks like to respond differently in the moment you're in.
That's the gap most self-help content leaves. RNTD tries to close it.
Find out which pattern is running your reactions in relationships, stress, and uncertainty.
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