About Corey

My name is Corey Pickett. I am a writer, digital creator, and former hospitality worker who spent nearly twenty-four years navigating the highs and lows of the service industry. I worked behind bars, waited tables, and managed restaurants, all while quietly losing touch with myself. I became an expert at holding space for others, often at the expense of my own well-being, and spent much of my adult life trapped in a cycle of addiction, burnout, and survival.

Addiction shaped part of my story, as did chronic anxiety, a relentless work ethic, and the unshakable feeling that I was made for something more than the life I was living. But for a long time, I couldn’t access that truth. I was too overwhelmed, too exhausted, too entangled in the noise of the grind to hear the voice within me. The system rewarded my silence and my sacrifice, and for a while, I stayed numb just to keep going.

Everything began to unravel in 2024, when Hurricane Helene hit the small town I was living in. The life I had been clinging to fell apart in an instant. Tourism disappeared, my home community fractured, and I was left standing in the aftermath of a storm that mirrored the internal chaos I had been carrying for years. I realized, painfully and honestly, that I could not create the life I imagined while living in survival mode. So I walked away from what remained, moved in with my mother, and tried to find my footing again.

At first, I believed that a few months of rest might be enough to repair what had broken. I stepped away from work and daily demands, thinking that quiet and time alone would be the medicine I needed. But the stillness didn’t bring relief. It revealed just how deep the damage had gone. My nervous system was completely fried. The exhaustion wasn’t something I could sleep off or self-care my way through. It wasn’t just physical. It was spiritual. The burnout had reached the root of who I was.

Not long after, I received the call to care for my father, whose health had taken a critical turn. Without hesitation, I said yes. When I arrived he was on the brink of death and it hit me, that I once again had to put my own needs aside in order to try to save his life. For three months, I stepped fully into the role of caregiver. I cooked every meal, tracked every supplement, and made it my mission to advocate for his healing in a broken health care system that had already counted him out. That chapter tested me on every level. It stripped away distraction, destroyed illusion, and brought me face to face with what truly matters. It was a sacred pause, but also an unrelenting fire that I wasn’t sure I would come out of.

But I did make it through. I saved his life, and it remains one of the most difficult, humbling, and transformative things I have ever done. It forced me to embody everything I claimed to believe about healing. There was no room for theory. I had to show up with conviction, faith, and unwavering presence. And in that process, I encountered something I didn’t expect. I found God—not as a concept, but as a living presence. The Holy Spirit met me there, in the quiet moments, in the desperation, in the places I had reached the end of myself. Trust me when I say I wasn’t searching for it. It found me.

That encounter changed everything. It wasn’t something I could intellectualize or explain away. It was a holy interruption and a rupture in everything I thought I knew about healing, faith, and power. In that season, I didn’t find God through practices or spiritual seeking. I found God through surrender. Through the quiet force of divine love that broke through every illusion I had adopted to cope with pain. I laid down the tools I had once depended on and began to rebuild my life on something real. I got baptized. I began to pray not as a ritual, but as a relationship. I stepped away from my New Age faith and for the first time in my adult life, I felt the clarity of who I was created to be.

Eventually, It was time for my own healing and through that new foundation I had found I began writing again. I picked up the pieces of every breakdown I had survived and turned them into language. Detox the Matrix emerged from that process as both a testimony and a guide. It became the framework for everything I had lived through. A lifeline I would have given anything to find during my own wilderness season.

Empathiqa is the digital home I have built to carry that message forward. It is not just a personal brand or a creative outlet. It is a movement. A space for people who are waking up to the truth about the world we live in and choosing to do something about it. It is for those who have seen through the illusions of food, health, media, spirituality, and modern culture and are ready to break cycles, regulate their nervous systems, and rebuild a life rooted in integrity, clarity, and divine connection.

I created this platform for the version of me who almost gave up. And for anyone who has found themselves wandering through their own wilderness, wondering if there is a way out.

There is. You are not crazy. You are waking up.

Welcome to Empathiqa.