A tribute to the man who gave me a soundtrack for a difficult time. When I heard, yesterday, of Chester Bennington’s passing, I felt a hollowness within. Linkin Park’s music (especially their debut Hybrid Theory album) helped define a major inflection point in my life and growth. I’ve struggled with existential questions since childhood, and …
Category archives: Pain and Recovery
The most unhelpful question when things go wrong
And 2 reasons it’s so common There’s a question I often get from people I’m working with that breaks my heart. The question is this: “How do I get back to who I used to be?” It’s a question I understand, being as human as they are. But the reason it breaks my heart is, it’s …
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Not all thinking about death is morbid
A meditation on “dark” subjects Photo: Neil Thomas I often think about what others consider dark topics. Pain. Suffering. Death. Evil. And I’m not just interested in them for their own sake — which is why I don’t consider my interest morbid (as some have described it), but rather for the questions that they raise. I’ve always been one to ask …
Why are emotional wounds so hard to “treat”?
So in my last post, “How our wounds make us human,” I explained what a wound is. I’ll recap the definition: An emotional wound is the “breakage” in your image of yourself or of life, that’s caused by a negative experience. In this post, I’ll be unpacking that definition and showing you why wounds can be so …
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How our wounds make us human
No, I’m not about to romanticise pain. Wounds hurt, and nobody likes them, including me. But they do make us human, and I want to explain how in this post. You know the saying: “Everyone’s got a little bit of madness”? I don’t really like it (and if you know or follow me at all, you can already guess why: because …
Why is rape so frustrating to explain?
Or, Thoughts on rethinking rape advocacy to rapists Most people think of rape as a VERY BAD THING. Most people also believe that only VERY BAD PEOPLE do VERY BAD THINGS. The trouble is, most people don’t think of themselves as VERY BAD PEOPLE. Ergo, the following thinking: “If rape is a VERY BAD THING, and …
What’s wrong with how we think about pain and suffering
I was about 14 when two of my closest friends lost their fathers and another one lost a brother, all within 12 months. Their bereavement was my first personal experience with death. For some reason I can’t now remember (the books I read probably), I knew enough then to know I knew nothing of what …
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How people answer this question might predict their mental health outcomes
How the way people with long term medical conditions answer a simple question can point to how well they will do over time.u