About Cain Parish
Cain Parish is a communication analyst & author of an ongoing research project on psychological influence, communication, relationships and human behaviour.
With almost a decade of industry experience, Parish’s work spans communications, generative AI projects, and strategic initiatives, drawing on experience that includes business development, consulting, PR, branding strategy, and individual client work focused on behavioral change.
He now writes about both personal & professional culture, exploring topics such as sociology, relationships, linguistic theory and strategic communication for people and businesses. His work is designed to help people better communicate in their day-to-day lives, whether that means navigating their personal relationships or optimising their professional circumstances. Cain is currently based in Australia.
Background & F.A.Qs
What is the point of this site?
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This website is many things – a portfolio, a place to sell books, a journal, a blog, an educational resource and a hub for my professional activities.
We are seeing an uptick of personal branding and micro-influencers in expert niches, alongside an incredible downturn in confidence regarding the viability of exclusively writing and publishing as a career. This is somewhat dejecting to me as an author, but encouraging to me as a comms professional.
If I could sit in a cabin in the woods and scribble prose to myself for a living, I would. Unfortunately, I must contribute to society in order to be rewarded with currency that allows me to purchase goods and services. This website is my attempt at leveraging my experiences, passions and expertise into doing exactly that in a manner I find personally and professionally fulfilling.
What credentials do you have? Why should I trust your word on anything?
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I do occasionally find this question in my inbox, typically from people wondering if I have an academic background in any of the subjects I speak on – particularly psychology or similar.
To be clear, I don’t have a degree in psychology by any means, and I’m certainly not any form of registered mental health professional.
My education and qualifications are in business and marketing – my career started in advertising and copywriting, then B2B communications. On the freelance side, I’ve done many years of coaching/consulting and even dipped my toe into hypnotherapy in a private practice environment.
While my background isn’t in clinical psychology or pathology, my expertise lies in language and human communication – fields far broader than just psychology. Our interactions, relationships, and how we represent ourselves are fundamentally shaped by the language and soft skills we employ. This is my core focus, drawing on my experience across my fields as a professional.
As with many people in various careers and industries, the onus should be to find one’s lane and stick to it. Even the smartest surgeons in the world may not be the people you want to trust to do your taxes. We seek out expertise relevant to our particular problem.
So, when it comes to the effects of language on human behaviour, my experience and research inform my analysis and insights. My aim is always to offer clarity and practical perspective. When I venture into other topics, it is always from my own experiences and sources I’m willing to trust. If I’m wrong or you disagree with something I’ve written, then so be it – nobody is going to nail everything in life.
Is Cain Parish a pseudonym?
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Yes – Cain Parish is a pseudonym (aka. a pen name). This isn’t a secret – many people in all parts of my life know me under either version of my names.
Whilst I’ve never been averse to using my real name for publishing or online content, there were a number of advantages to a pen name that justified the decision in my opinion:
- A degree of separation between the personal and the professional – before my career first got started, I didn’t want to influence job opportunities or prospective employers/clients whilst I figured out my niche and my voice.
- Decreased personal spillover – whilst it didn’t entirely remove unwanted parasocial attention from my life, it did give me a sense of comfort to be at least partially anonymised.
- Aesthetic – I think a pen name makes it cleaner to distinguish the person from the author. Often creative or content projects involve a degree of hyperbole or exaggeration for the sake of getting one’s point across, and it helps me to keep the two separate.
What is my research process & methodology behind my essays?
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As may be evident from my essays and educational pieces, which you can find here, the format and content vary wildly.
It would be false to imply in any way that my methodology is as rigorous as a scientific submission to a journal – I am not an academic publisher. What I focus on is practicality – what models and structures of thought can help contribute to the real problems being faced, and what information I understand to be accurate helps to convey those messages.
Where possible, I cite sources and attempt to corroborate my own assertions. However, communication is a nebulous and often unverifiable field. There is a limit on what one can glean through peer reviewed double blind studies alone – and much of one’s experience in this industry is going to be shaped by circumstances such as culture and context.
This does not mean I am comfortable espousing things without a shred of evidence – just that in many cases, expert opinion is as high a standard of evidence as is accessible on a topic. If data and analytics are unavailable, I will gladly turn to the opinions of myself and others in my field and am personally happy to take them at their word – assuming what they say works.
As an analogy – the structure and content of a door-to-door sales pitch is never going to feature in an academic paper. Thus, we turn to the experts for their opinion – the salesmen themselves.
If I have gotten something wrong, misrepresented a concept or research exists that supports/contradicts a point I’ve made, please reach out to me at cain@cainparish.com and I will happily take it under advisement.
Why not focus on just professional OR personal communication?
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I will admit, it is unconventional for someone to blend the two. Having said that, I believe that communication is a holistic skill. Developing social skills and stronger personal values helped everywhere, from my friendships to my work life.
I structure my site the way I do so that you, the reader, have the best chance at finding the nugget of information that solves your incredibly particular problem, or scratches your uniquely curious itch.
Over the years, I have drawn from an ungodly amount of informative sources, from journal whitepapers to books about pickup artists. Some of this information was slop, some of it was useful, but it was, first and foremost, a lot of words. If I can synthesise that information into a more accessible way and present it in an educational and entertaining way, I’m happy.
There are personal problems and professional problems – I try to tackle what I can within my own expertise. That happens to involve both.
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