Emotional Anthropologist
Understand your emotions and the world that shapes them.
Free creative activities, stories, and a little room to wonder.
Emotional Anthropologist explores how we feel, how we relate, and how culture, history, and the conditions of our lives shape both.
Try something with friends, spend time with a story, or step into a forest where things rarely go quite as planned.
There is always more to discover.
Free games & creative activities
A little imagination.
Something to do together.
An ordinary spoon has three suspicious histories. A shop sells magic with inconvenient instructions. A cloud arrives at a gathering and needs somewhere to sit.
Our free storytelling games and creative activities invite you to make things up, build on each other’s ideas, and see where a different perspective takes you.
Play with friends, a partner, or a small group. Tell the story aloud, draw it, or start with a single “what if?”
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The Object With Three Histories
It belonged to a cloud. Your friend is quite sure it belonged to a frog. Somehow, both of you might be right.
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The Shop of Slightly Inconvenient Magic
These boots will take you anywhere. Unfortunately, they insist on greeting every mushroom along the way.
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A Gathering Place That Keeps Changing
Make somewhere you’d like to spend time. Then meet a visitor who needs something you hadn’t thought of.
Stories from Red Wood Forest
A little further along the path…
Welcome to Red Wood Forest, where clouds carry satchels, plants have travel plans, and a perfectly ordinary afternoon may need rescuing.
Read a short fantasy story on your own or share one aloud. Each is a small doorway into the forest. Start wherever you like.
An afternoon on the loose01
The Cloud Who Borrowed Tomorrow
Bayu could really use another afternoon. Luckily, a tiny shop has one in a jar.
Unluckily, it belongs to their friends. And it’s just escaped.
A very small traveller02
A Pot of One’s Own
Iri’s plant wants a bigger pot. And a breeze. And perhaps a different neighbourhood.
When a travelling garden passes the window on a giant snail, it packs three pebbles and a piece of string.
A storytelling card game in development
The next forest adventure could be yours.
We’re making Red Wood Forest, a card game where curious visitors arrive with unusual problems, useful things come with complications, and everyone brings a different idea about what should happen next.
You’ll invent plans, make choices, and discover what your group creates together.
The game is still taking shape. Our free activities offer a little of the imaginative play we’re exploring along the way.
New developments and invitations to playtest, when they’re ready.
What do feelings have to do with all this?
Quite a lot, once you start looking.
A cloud keeps missing time with friends because the last delivery always falls to them. A plant wants company and enough room to grow. Around your own table, two people might imagine completely different endings to the same story.
These are the kinds of moments that interest us.
We bring psychology into conversation with culture, history, art, storytelling, and lived experience. We ask what a feeling might be connected to, whose account we haven’t heard, and what could change about the situation itself.
There’s room to recognise something familiar. There’s also room to discover that another person’s experience is different from yours.
People & practices we work with
Care also happens beyond these pages.
We work with therapists, care practices, and community organisations whose work connects with the questions we explore here.
Meet some of the practices in our wider network. Explore their approaches, get to know their teams, and find out what support they offer.
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People & practices
Empowered Mind Therapy Center
Therapy, EMDR, and Brainspotting exploring trauma, burnout, identity, relationships, and the pressures people live with.
Visit their website -
People & practices
Phoenix Rising Centers
Trauma-informed care for queer, trans, neurodivergent, disabled, immigrant, and Global Majority communities, with attention to relationships and systems.
Visit their website -
People & practices
Mindful Springs Counseling
Therapy drawing on approaches including EMDR, Brainspotting, and body-based work for people seeking different ways to explore healing.
Visit their website -
People & practices
Dear Therapy
Culturally responsive online therapy in Massachusetts, with attention to identity, migration, neurodivergence, and community.
Visit their website -
People & practices
Avid Intimacy
Relationship and sex therapy exploring intimacy, sexuality, attachment, emotional connection, and the ways people relate.
Visit their website -
People & practices
Unapologetic Psychology
Mental health and performance care for athletes, performers, LGBTQIA2S+ communities, and people navigating high-pressure environments.
Visit their website -
People & practices
Your Story Counselling
Multicultural psychotherapy for individuals, couples, and families exploring trauma, relationships, identity, and life transitions.
Visit their website -
People & practices
Healing Umbrella Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy and psychiatric care for queer, trans, neurodivergent, polyamorous, kink, and allied communities in Tennessee.
Visit their website -
People & practices
Forward Wellness
Counseling in Pennsylvania with a focus on neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+, and reproductive mental health care, alongside relationships and family support.
Visit their website -
People & practices
Experience Change
Therapy in Colorado for individuals, relationships, and families, with attention to culture, identity, neurodivergence, and the wider conditions of people’s lives.
Visit their website
A note now and then
A little post from the forest?
An activity for your next gathering. A story for a quiet afternoon. News from the game as it grows.
Leave your email for occasional notes from Emotional Anthropologist.