For those of you who don’t know, CAKE PICNIC is a large gathering in celebration of cake put together by Elisa Sunga, and her team of volunteers. Sunga’s earliest day dreams of the event were small and intimate. Now, thousands of paying attendees come together, gaining community in the shared act of slicing chiffon and scooping up trifles. The 2025 CAKE PICNIC tour will cover 6 cities; San Francisco (1387 cakes and counting), San Diego (318 cakes), London (463 cakes), L.A. (961 cakes), Minneapolis (647 cakes), and New York (900+).

When I was notified to order a CAKE PICNIC ticket, I found myself in the midst of an MRI scan during a study appointment (I’m a research assistant)--no cake for me. But I will be living vicariously through my friend, Julia, who’ll be in attendance.

With hundreds of people readily offering their delectable desserts, Julia is bound to make a new friend or two as they each dive into her ube-flavored creation. As people enter, giddily waiting to taste new confections, I see an opportunity to cultivate new friendship and new belongings that are so hard to find in your twenties and even more so in a city often seen as aloof or reclusive.

When you enter the building, you may find yourself transported to a networking event, ready to present your elevator pitch, but that is not what CAKE PICNIC is about. To put it simply, CAKE PICNIC is meant to foster connections through confections. To provide a space for people to find common ground through common interests that travel beyond their desserts.

Outside of the occasional running club, yoga class or smoke break, the spaces we find as adults to foster friendships are turning into online forums–group chats where you can hide behind a pseudonym and an avatar. At CAKE PICNIC, there are no screens keeping us from sharing ourselves organically, only small tables just reaching your waistline as you find another person across the aisle leaning for the same knife, talking over a mountain of meringue. These are the connections that Instagram, Twitter, and even Substack can only dream about. But we have to hand it to them. Afterall, the hundreds of people eating cake on November 8th will only have been given the opportunity as a result of social media, highlighting Sunga’s use of these platforms as the perfect display of social media engagement.

As CAKE PICNIC continues to grow in popularity, I hope the rest of us take notes on her demonstration of how to properly use social media for the connection that we are so often craving, alongside our cakes, and yet struggling to actually find.

Across platforms like this, I admire the many advocates pursuing the remediation of media by asking for greater limits on media use by children. I want to add to this by cementing young millennials and older members of Gen Z within this conversation, not only do we have to protect children but we also have to protect those of us who are losing the valuable serendipitous moments of our 20s and 30s. While we may never escape the hold that Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, etc. have, especially in forming cultural relevance, we can change how we use these platforms through CAKE PICNICS, and pastry picnics and pizza picnics and popcorn picnics and move picnics and candy picnics….the list goes on.

These are just a few ideas and I didn’t even mention the obvious ones like a cookie picnic or a brownie picnic and or a focaccia picnic or a panettone picnic…okay, I’m getting ahead of myself. But my point still stands. Now is the time to revolutionize, to loosen social media’s grasp by responsibly using it for its initial intention without letting it dilute our reality.

It wasn’t until the doctor prescribed these red pills that he began to feel better. (Note: These pills are no longer approved by the FDA and Canada had gotten rid of them long ago, a sign that they work a little too well.) While finding a cure for Peter’s migraines took several months, discovering the root of his suffering was an inquiry even Dr. Spaceman could figure out as Peter played football and proceeded to run into other people head on quite frequently.

Given the equifinality between my dad and brother, I began to reexamine the many events leading up to my own migraines. I could rule out a few possibilities though given that I’d finished my orthodontic journey in middle school and wasn’t actively plummeting my body into others on a weekly basis. I was left with a few options:

1. Running on 6 hours of sleep each night.

2. The plethora of social media, YouTube, and Netflix I consumed on a daily basis.

3. Never drinking water…ever.

4. Exercising excessively while not eating properly.

5. Consuming large amounts of dairy.

6. Heavily drinking enough coffee to fuel a small but mighty militia.

I have the privilege of reflecting on this list after noticing the main culprit, but the high school version of me did not, leading her to write a very excitable journal entry not too long ago to capture the moment in what can only be described as a chaotic encounter with one’s own stream of consciousness.

High School Me:

“My mysterious morning migraine continues to die down, but my skepticism about its genesis remains high. I’ve tried drinking more water and taking a daily over the counter medicine recommended by my doctor, and still nothing. Perhaps the rare ice cream indulgence is the main cause. My intestines will tell you that they don’t like lactose, and I assume that a headache is my brain’s way of saying the same thing. I tried a morning coffee at 6:15 assuming that it would allow me to drain my plumbing system, alas…it did not.

Ibuprofen! That’s what a smart person would do; she would take some Advil. So I did, and to my dismay that refused to work as well. So what would an even smarter person do? … Should I go to the Doctor or should I continue to self diagnose?

Would Mom force me to get an MRI? Based on the fact that she forced my pediatrician to have my blood drawn because I had a mild case of strep that she believed to be mono (even after getting a positive strep test) means that me stepping into the MRI scanner for a migraine would be the only normal part of this equation.

Ughh….Will this ever end?

Brain: Yes, just drink some water!

I’m just going to go on my phone to distract myself.

Brain: Or drink water.

Maybe read some more.

Brain: This high quality NY tap water looks good.

Maybe I'll journal this moment for later.

Brain: Ugh! At least have a La Croix.

Okay, okay! I’ll have a La Croix. I feel so much better now but, uh, where are those MRI results?

—

While the water may have stalled them for a while, the migraines persisted and I found myself slowly crossing off item 3 (Never drinking water..ever) from the list before summer. Once school ended and my academic career no longer relied on insufficient amounts of sleep, item 1 (Running on 6 hours of sleep each night) and 6 (Heavily drinking enough coffee to fuel a small but mighty militia) were soon crossed off as well as the two went hand in hand. And then there were three…that is until 2 (The plethora of social media, YouTube, and Netflix I consumed on a daily basis) and 4 (Exercising excessively while not eating properly) eventually found themselves on the chopping block as I was no longer playing a sport and deleted all forms of media off of my phone.

As I slowly interrogated each culprit one by one, I grew dissatisfied by my final result. Would I really have to cut out dairy? I’m sure there is something else I’m missing, I thought. Maybe I just need to up my Advil intake and maybe even take a hit of the left over good stuff stocked in Peter’s medicine cabinet. “No, no, no” the figurative angel on my shoulder would say, hanging by a thread. Well, maybe she’s not so much an angel, more so a very intimidating version of my mom’s aunts, two Irish Catholic nuns who nailed their paddles to the wall of the convent “just to serve as a reminder”...whatever that means.

Thanks to them, there I was, left alone with the thought that I'd have to give up dairy. But if I was gonna go out, I’d better go out with a bang!

That night, I went to the grocery store searching for my favorite dairy-filled snacks, desserts, and dinners. Among them were eggplant rolitini, caprese salad, Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food Ice Cream and Délice de Bourgogne – a French cheese that can only really be found at the cheese shop my brother worked at in high school. Employees were referred to as Cheesemongers, and they were forced to wear shirts that said, “Who cut the cheese?... we cut the cheese.” And as any one in a close proximity would tell you, after my dairy-filled day, I did too.

While I always knew of my lactose intolerance, I never did anything about it. Instead I just pushed through the pain. It’s not like I was medically diagnosed, rather it was a simple observation of my own that was gaining traction given that 65% of people worldwide are lactose intolerant. I knew in my heart, and very bloated stomach, that my inability to metabolize lactase (the protein in milk) would soon catch up to me, and that I wasn’t the only one going through this realization.

After my final hurrah, I gave up dairy and observed my migraines, stomach aches and overall mood. That last part might be the hardest. Would my mood actually get better by giving up an essential ingredient in my most favorite foods? Well, let’s see.

For the next month (February), I kept a record of how I felt each morning after waking up. Light colors reflect a better mood, darker colors not so much. Red Ms represent whether or not a migraine was present that morning.

While I may have never reached pure elation from going dairy free, I did see promising results over time as the lighter colored boxes and lack of red Ms later in the month suggest. Clearly there is a correlation between my migraines and mood that is seemingly obvious. Of course I would feel worse when I have a debilitating headache. But what we also see is that I feel much better when I don’t have dairy so much so that it might be worth ridding my diet of dairy completely. There may be no numerical data to understand if there was a significant difference in my mood across days, but I think my ability to eliminate dairy entirely from my diet for the past four years, minus the occasional dip into Délice de Bourgogne or butter poisoning from a local restaurant, demonstrates a different kind of significance.

Now, this depiction does not necessarily control for the many factors that could be impacting my mood throughout the month of February, nor does it show any numerical continuity, but these seemingly ordinal data gave me an easy way of interpreting and reflecting on how I felt when starting to quit dairy on Monday February 1st to Sunday February 28th.

So much of science is dependent upon clinical research that takes an exorbitant amount of time and money to come to the proper conclusion. Given that lactose intolerance is very low on the totem pole of sufferings worth giving grant money to, I find my own research and method to be easily replicable and applicable to those experiencing the same misfortunes. Sure, a clinical trial controlling for the many factors that I did not would be a sufficient way of providing information, but no one really knows you better than you. In research, anyone can be an outlier to which the study results and suggestions might not be applicable, making the ability to conduct your own experiments on simple medical anomalies and everyday irritations an underrated quality. This is especially so in a world where even the simplest of annoyances like dealing with lactose intolerance to attending meetings that could have been emails impact millions of people. Somewhere there is a laundry list of things to study that are deemed unworthy, but then there is you and what you decide is important to learn, undertake, study, and explore.

Now, I want to make this clear, dairy freedom will never end world hunger, solve climate change, or eradicate the many injustices that plague our world and are worth committing millions of dollars in grant money to. But, for about 65% of us, it might make the task of solving these many issues a little bit more pleasant and stink a little less–turning this bout of self-experimentation and essay of public humiliation that I decided to share with you into something worthwhile.

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Attached to this idea that reading would help us walk around in another person’s shoes for a little while, I turned in an essay that I was ultimately unhappy with. I presented my not-so-significant findings with the help of many cliches all while saying that we need more research to have definitive results. (Isn’t that what they all say?) I got an A-. 

Soon thereafter, I entered college where I would study empathy. I even conducted a senior thesis—not on reading fiction and empathy, but rather psychopathy. Now, this is not an essay about that, but rather what I learned about psychology in the process of writing about it. When conducting research on individuals high in psychopathy, I inevitably encountered the expected stereotypical questions: “You mean you study crazy people?”, “So you recruited people from an insane asylum?”, “Oh, so like Patrick Bateman kind of?” (These are real things that real people have said to me.)

My answers were no, no, and definitely not. 

In trying to explain the most basic aspects of my thesis, I realized how large the gap is between researchers and novices, despite the many psychologizing words like “triggering”, “traumatizing”, “cortisol”, and “dopamine” entering our vernacular. 

In the media, psychopathy is depicted as this inherent evil that drives the individual to commit heinous acts of violence. Often, these acts are found entertaining at best and dismissible at worst. The reality of psychopathy is much less vulgar and glamorous than how it is illustrated in the media. It is also much less rare than you may want to believe. In fact, 1 in 100 people have psychopathy, meaning that you have probably come in contact with someone high in psychopathy within your lifetime, or at least have passed them on the street. In meeting them, you probably found that they simply struggle to share the feelings of others, making the ability to form attachments, to care, and to love very difficult. 

This definition is far from what the characters in American Psycho, The Silence of The Lambs, and No Country For Old Men portray. Clearly, what producers find entertaining isn’t always accurate, a fact that is not new or unsurprising. But we have yet to explore what this means for those actually suffering with mental health issues of all kinds. Psychopathy is not only one of the least understood psychopathologies but also one of the most stigmatized, and I can’t help but think that how it’s portrayed in the media is contributing to this reality. 

With inaccurate portrayals we are perpetuating the stigmas surrounding our most vulnerable populations, furthering individuals in need from seeking treatment and living a full life as Matt Bowen discussed in his TEDTalk. Truthfully, to change this, we may only have one solution that involves using the very system creating the problem. Here it is: Psychopathy is in need of a better PR team. And so are many other mental health disorders.

The misunderstandings of psychopathy, along with other psychopathologies, like depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia, within the media are deeply rooted, but that is not to say accurate representations aren’t within reach. Memoirs, including The Noonday Demon, The Best Minds, and The Center Cannot Hold to name a few reflect mental health disorders without giving in to the expectations of editors and producers. After reading these books, I’ve come to see large discrepancies between the media’s fiction and reality. There is no asylum or haunted ward, there is no straightjacket or muzzle. 

In the memoirs I previously mentioned, Andrew Solomon, Jonathan Rosen, and Elyn Saks reflect on the many shortcomings of psychiatric care while relaying the very human experience of suffering from a mental health disorder. Perhaps these authors’ lack of glamour may not be good for TV, but we do ourselves a disservice by refusing to highlight real-world experiences in a digestible way. When we see Hannibal Lecter on screen we know that is not an accurate portrayal, and then we brush it off to the side, ignoring the “entertainment” that protrudes our sub-conscious. As a result, when something else comes along like A Beautiful Mind, Silver Linings Playbook, or Beautiful Boy we assume that they too are not worthy of attention despite them being based on true-ish events that could possibly inform mental health awareness depending on their accuracy.

–

The memoirs by Solomon, Rosen, and Saks I read were found deep within the bookshelves of a university library that eerily looks similar to Azkaban. They are accurate and easy to find. That is, if you are looking for them. This differs from what we know about pop psychology, where all you have to do is have a conversation about social media and you suddenly come across advertisements for supplements that promise to get rid of your brain fog. 

This needs to change. But how? 

The only way to rewrite this wrong of ours is to get more people to care about it. There is a long history of important events and people that have received greater recognition once given a proper platform to stand on. 

Think about it. Without Lin-Manuel Miranda, we may not have the same appreciation for Alexander Hamilton. Without Rebecca Skloot, the story behind Henrietta Lacks’s pioneering contributions to the world of science and cancer research may have gone uncredited. Without Tarana Burke, millions of women may have never come forward to share in a worldwide reckoning about sexual abuse. 

I could go on, but I think we both understand that what makes movements, what inspires, what makes you care is so often the media surrounding our history. If winners are writing history, and brave artists are rewriting it, then psychology, not just psychopathy, needs a better PR team. Media coverage and artistic visionary, when done correctly, can significantly change our perspective on the subject at hand. We see this every day with modern politics, why should it not be true of mental health? 

Since the pandemic, words surrounding psychology have entered the chat, the villa, and the public lexicon. Increasingly, our everyday conversations have begun to center around topics like burnout, dopamine spikes, and holding space, but the media informing these conversations has only splashed when what we need is a cannonball. With so many individuals reporting elevated levels of loneliness, depression, and anxiety, I believe it’s time for psychology to hire a Tree Paine of its own, as stigmatization has not decreased in proportion to our awareness of the issue at hand. 

–

When I came home from my junior year of college, before I started studying psychopathy, I volunteered in a psychiatric unit where I spent most of my day talking to patients. In relaying my summer plans to others, I found tinges of apprehension in their voices, telling me that we have yet to realize how essential mental health awareness is, not only for those living in the most extreme cases, but also for those living in silence without a medical staff behind the door. Once I began to study high-functioning psychopaths, this very idea was emphasized in just one conversation I had with someone in the psychology department. “The thing about people with psychopathy is that there is a wall between them and the rest of the world. Some of them really do want to change. Some of them really want to experience the intensity of love and compassion, but they can’t.” And that’s not their fault, just like it’s not the fault of millions of others who live with depression, anxiety, ADHD, tics, etc who have to endure their disorder. Our understanding and awareness of mental health is not just for those suffering, but for those who don’t understand it. Because none of us are immune to the mental and physical consequences of living. And yet, we make it seem like it is and that…that’s on us. So, why not try and change it.

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Thank you for reading!

After reflection and contemplation I edit my writing down to a nub. So you never know when a piece might meet the chopping block. If you’re reading this now, great! This essay hasn’t met my own personal guillotine, aka the delete file on my desktop.