Grievances from a shallow grave

I never quite managed to tell The Tell-tale Heart and Death of a Salesman apart – or the latter from Fiddler on the Roof, for that matter – I was so bored out of my skull from all the pretentiousness that I somehow blocked out the differences. I’d rather read The Salesman Fiddler Tell-all (Death on the Roof). (I mean, who wouldn’t?)

What’s this got to do with the price of moth-eaten stockings? Well. All three of the aforementioned works of fiction (one would assume) are quite dark. And being introduced to them during my hormone-infested formative years, when I was already submerged in thoughts about the frailty of the human body, they all seemed to embody the same message; death will come for us all. I suspect that’s when I first decided that I wasn’t going to let death take me by surprise – I was going out on my own terms.

And, thus, my fear of death was born. Much thanks to the flawed human psyche. I wanted to finish myself off. I had made my peace with dying, but I had a few things to tick off my list before I could escort myself off the ledge, as it were. I didn’t dare to sleep, in sheer fear of never waking up again. (Which eventually resulted in fainting from the exhaustion, but you’d be surprised at just how long a stubborn child can manage to stay awake if left to their own angst-ridden devices). Thanatophobia, for you learned folks.

I know I promised you a post about suicide and friendship, but I changed my mind. And then, as I was running through a graveyard to catch a bus yesterday, I started thinking about the link between death anxiety and suicidal ideation – surely there must be one. But now I cannot find any research on the matter, so I am hoping this finds its way to a person in the position to do a proper study on it. In the meantime, you can read about “Attempted suicide and Death Anxiety” on the American National Library of Medicine. It was the only thing slightly scientific, not in a Reddit thread.

And instead, I will give you my two cents on how forced time off work/paid seasonal leave can lead to burnout if you have fallen out of love with your job. I’m not talking about going away on holiday here, I am talking about being faced with whole days completely without team meetings, work calls, the constant need to check your phone for notifications and the endless to-do-lists, and you haven’t had to ask for it.

Most people will enjoy the time off, fill it with family activities, festive pish, a Tinder-palooza if so inclined, and some might feel a bit anxious about not being able to respond to emails, or they didn’t manage to get everything done before they left the office on the last day, but even those people will be able to relax after a few days have gone by without any disasters. And, depending of just how many days one is awarded off, some of these people might start to notice how their sleep pattern improves. Some might notice a slight weight loss, their complexion clears up, all of a sudden, it’s been a full week without them reaching for a single Paracetamol. But they might think very little of it – they might even brush it off as them finally starting to get over that cold that somehow came over them mid-October and never quite left.

But then, as if by magic (or, rather, a curse), the last day of the holiday arrives and they unable to fall asleep, because they’re terrified the alarm won’t wake them, so they pass out some time around 1am, only to wake up in a pool of sweat two hours later, which then has them twisting and turning until about 40 minutes before the alarm’s set to go off, when they finally fall asleep. One alarm and five snoozes later, they’re standing in front of the bathroom mirror, wondering what has happened to the person looking back at them the day before, when they hadn’t even needed an alarm to get them out of bed by 6. The week is off to a shitty start, and when they get to the office, they are inundated by emails they are unable to respond to, because of the incessant post-hols chatter between the more cheerful colleagues, who have been looking forward to seeing everyone again (and no doubt get to see a little less of their respective families). So, little by little, the sleep-deprived shell of a human being just sits there, staring into their computer screen(s) looking for the meaning of life, as the first headache starts to brew, accompanied by a fever and a slightly elevated heartrate from the stress. This, of course, is followed by nausea, but at the same time they are overcome by a seemingly insatiable hunger – they can feel their body expanding just at the thought of food… If this is you? I have one word for you; burnout.

We don’t talk enough about the physical symptoms of burnout, or the detrimental effect it can have on our everyday. There is a chance that a change of scenery can fix it, but, regardless, you can benefit greatly from seeing your GP about this. Just talking about it with a professional can be a tremendous help. This is your body screaming at you to stop what you’re doing and tend to it before it shrivels up and dies a slow, painful death. Or, if you’re just dying to leave a cortisol-filled middle-aged corpse behind, continue ignoring it.

If the prospect of going to work feels like a fate worse than death and fills you with dread – or worse, with indifference – you might want to update your LinkedIn profile…

I leave you today, with the immortal words from Clare Harner’s 1934 poem Immortality, as published in the December issue of poetry magazine The Gypsy:

Do not stand
   By my grave, and weep.
I am not there,
   I do not sleep —
I am the thousand winds that blow
I am the diamond glints in snow
I am the sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle, autumn rain.
As you awake with morning’s hush,
I am the swift, up-flinging rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight,
I am the day transcending night.
Do not stand
   By my grave, and cry—
I am not there,
   I did not die.

Because, I am not there. I did not die. I just listened to my body and managed to get myself pulled out of the abyss before I was buried alive. Now, go buy my book, please. Or, you could send me a wee message! See you next Tuesday.

13th January 2026 0

Finding calm with a busy brain

I took this photo at a gig this weekend, just as the shutter on my camera stopped working properly – hence the blur. Not a great thing to have happen mid-show. Alas, when I was going through the hundreds of images I had uploaded from my trusty Canon onto my desktop in the hope of finding something usable, my heart jumped a little at this particular photo. THIS is what my brain feels like when I’m told to be quiet or to sit still for any undisclosed length of time. It might resemble noise pollution to most, but, to me, it is more akin to an everchanging tapestry of neurons firing and processor overload.

If you, like me, have a slightly over-active mind, where there’s no end to the constant chatter going on behind your eyes, you may have been guilty of rolling your eyes so hard at the mention of the word ‘meditation’ that you’ve given yourself a headache on more than one occasion. Like trying to silence the voices in your head whilst sitting completely still for who knows how long is going to be anything other than a gigantic waste of time. Because, as we all know, this is how it works; the road to enlightenment/serenity is awarded only those who can shut down completely, sit in a lotus position for hours on end, breathe in and out in a pattern of inhalation for four seconds, hold for four, exhale for seven, without getting caught up in the counting, stop thinking about anything other than roots springing out of your arse and into the centre of mother earth (and also avoiding thinking resentful thoughts brought on by the word mother), be oblivious to the fact that the earth’s centre is filled with lava that will surely burn your rectal roots and not ground them, all the while trying to keep your eyes closed and not check the time every five seconds, to make sure you’ve counted your breathing seconds correctly. WRONG!

This might be how traditional meditation has been presented to most of us through books, films, YouTube channels and podcasts, and “everyone” all claim that meditation is “great” for people with ADHD, but no one’s ever bothered to tell us why it’s so great, shared with us the philosophy behind it, or let us know that there aren’t really any rules to how you should meditate. Turns out, you don’t even need to keep your eyes closed!

If you started reading this under the misapprehension that it would be another well-researched post filled with interesting links, I apologise. I’ve been under so much stress lately that I’ve been searching rather desperately for anything that could help, so when I came across this random podcast episode where they were discussing ADHD and meditation, I didn’t remember to bookmark it for later. (Very clever, I know). But the general gist of it, I remember, because the host and their guest confirmed something that I have been theorising for quite some time; that meditation can be relative to the person doing the meditation.

Let me explain for a second: I find running meditative, especially when I go hard enough that my body becomes so tired that I can no longer stop my thoughts from flowing freely, which in turn brings forth many a solution to any conundrums I have had in the past. If I need to sort something out, that I can’t get my head around, or have an impossible deadline and keep procrastinating, I go for a long run, aiming for a PB. That works for me. I’ve tried sooooo many guided meditations, both live and to recordings, and all they do is stress me out. There’s too many rules! And how am I meant to find inner peace when people keep breathing, or the so-called guide keeps mispronouncing certain words or saying nonsensical things? Why can’t they just shut the fuck up so I can collect my thoughts for a second? Oh, I’m meant to “empty my mind and let go of what no longer serves me”. Right. How about giving me a goddamned second to think about what that might be? Oh, we’re manifesting now. Okay. What the fuck? I need to do things my way.

Needless to say, I was more than relieved when I heard the aforementioned episode, because – like many others with ADHD – I need confirmation on certain things. I need to know I’m doing things correctly. (It’s a miracle that I ever manage to walk anywhere without overthinking my every step, because no one has ever confirmed that I’m following the foot placement recipe correctly).

So, I thought I’d share this with whoever else out there needs it. It gave me some piece of mind and I am allowing myself to stop torturing myself with the biweekly guided meditation pod I’ve been following for the past three years. That’s more than 39 hours of time wasted… but it could have become a lot more had I not realised that I can meditate in the way that I see fit.

So, what is the purpose of meditation? I like what I found on study.com: “Meditation is an act of connecting the mind and body to the present moment.”

They also list seven different types of meditation, in which we find ‘movement meditation’. I feel like so many have focussed on the relaxation aspect of mindfulness meditation, that it’s become ingrained in our culture that we need to be half-asleep in order to connect with our truth. There is something to be said for the breath work in meditation, of course, but I don’t necessarily think that you would have to follow a pattern set by someone else. Do you have someone set the temperature for your shower as well? I certainly hope not. It can of course be helpful to have a look at different techniques and what works best for which type of meditation, but at the end of the day, your meditation practice needs to work for you. It’s precious alone time for you and your brain – even the busier kind!

To finalise, this is a time of year when there’s more unwanted noise coming from every angle than normal. Perhaps we can find a way to turn all that food noise, money noise, people noise into background noise by finding a small pocket of alone time in a day. Just five minute can be enough, this podcast told me – that’s less than an average poo!

And on that note, I bid you farewell for the last time in 2025. See you next Tuesday!

Oh – please buy my book. I am very poor and in need of a new camera.

Perhaps I’ll kick the new year off with an interview with an up and coming band from Norway’s metal scene… Keep your peepers peeled!

HAPPY NEW YEAR, MAY THE NEW ONE BE A BIT LESS SHIT.

Wee update! I found a great article on ADDitude.com, where they provide a detailed account of how you can make meditation part of your daily routine without too much hassle. Click anywhere on this sentence to read. Cheers!

30th December 2025 0

Rumination, rebranding and other disasters

Tuesday is upon us, at long last. A home office workday has come to an end and the evening gig is but three hours away – just enough time for me to spew out some thoughts.

On the 27th of last month, I came to the realisation that something had to change. I needed to revamp my website, get an email address suitable for an adult female, start letting go of the things that no longer serve me (like the millions of threadbare band tees taking up space in my closet, so littered with holes they make the infamous emperor’s new clothes seem less revealing) – the time had come to fix my life. Yet, it’s taken me almost three weeks to justify shelling out the three bucks for a domain name I decided on back in 2014.

I should explain that this is not a unique event. These eureka moments occur at least thrice a year. BUT. The thing is, whenever I have thought something through, I always (almost without fail) end up overanalysing and ruminating until there’s very little left of the original idea and I’ve lost track of what was so great about it in the first place. Yet, spending hundreds of pounds in one transaction at Boots (or equivalent) doesn’t make me bat an eyelid. In fact, historically, my lack of impulse control in that department has been rather shocking.

So why – OH WHY?! – have I been unable to trust and listen to myself when I know in my gut exactly what I want and need to do (or, what I do NOT need or want, for that matter)? The need to meditate was hanging over me like a raincloud, so I ventured out on what was to become my fastest half marathon in three years, with only three Haribo Happy Cherries (my drug of choice) for sustenance and two hours worth of podcast episodes in my ears. The result? One very delighted and surprised middle-aged sweat-machine with a sore hip, fully determined to start cracking on that decade old to do list.

Incidentally, I think I cracked the code on that whole thing with the “ADHD super power”. When they mistakenly claim hyper focus, or their ability to make tough decisions when faced with potentially life-threatening scenarios, to be a super power, when in fact these symptoms are merely a conduit for the real super power; the masking of symptoms.

I got the idea from something someone said on a podcast about dyslexia and how some people would mask their difficulties by for instance learning a text by heart so that they could recite it in class, rather than reading it out. In much the same way, I taught myself to ‘take photos’ of pages in books that never spoke to me (trigonometry, anyone?), so that I could pull the images out whenever I had a test. As a defense mechanism, I effectively gave myself a photographic memory.

Perhaps I’ll write more on this next week. I haven’t decided yet. I might write about perimenopause. Either way, I’ve gone full gonzo. Gonzo With the Wind! Perhaps it is time to conclude this post.

Why menoPAUSE when you can menoFINISH, amirite? Ha. I jest. See you next Tuesday.

In the meantime, you can listen to the inimitable David Eugene Edwards and his Wovenhand on Bandcamp by clicking anywhere on this sentence.

11th November 2025 0

What if your perception of pain is all wrong?

Animation of person crying with inexplicable pain

There’s no bandage for a bleeding heart. No dressing for our emotional wounds. No over-the-counter remedies to dull the ache of losing a friend. Yet, this psychological, often dubbed emotional, pain can make us hurt like hell, in a very real and physical way.

(Personally, I don’t like calling it emotional pain – I feel like it takes away some of the validity of the experience, but maybe that’s just me. I really must stop being so emotional).

What’s more, psychological pain has no set expiration date. Physical pain, however, is often referred to as acute or chronic, meaning it comes with an indicator as to how long you will have to suffer and/or how often. (Although, I’d argue that psychological pain can also be both acute and chronic). Physical pain can be classified as either somatic or visceral, i.e. something that happens to the body visibly or internally but not the mind, and the person dealing with the pain will be able to explain or point to the location and extent of the pain with some degree of accuracy (providing they are conscious).

With a broken leg, you know the pain will stop at some point. If one of your toenails fall out after a long run, you know a new one will grow back in its place. Plus, there’s heaps of painkillers, bandages and other tools and remedies to help us keep the discomfort to a minimum while we heal. When the pain is coming from a place within that’s neither tissue nor bone, on the other hand, we’re meant to just suck it up and get over it. You can read more about the physiology of pain by clicking on this sentence.

My trusty Collins Thesaurus A-Z defines pain as “1 suffering, discomfort, hurt, irritation, tenderness, soreness 2 ache, stinging, aching, cramp, throb, throbbing, pang, twinge 3 sorrow, suffering, torture, distress, despair, misery, agony, sadness” (p. 200, 2008). I think we can agree that these terms can all be associated with psychological pain, some more than they can with physical pain – although, physical pain might lead to the third definition. In any case, pain is processed and interpreted by the brain, which then executes a response to protect us from whatever caused it. As far as I can tell. So one could assume that the pain suffered from a break-up could make someone hesitant to enter into a new relationship. But what is it that makes us hurt; the sensation itself, or the self-fulfilling prophecy of our expecting something to result in pain? Have we been conditioned to expect physical pain, when what we’re really feeling is a type of fear?

Imagine, if you will, that you are quite new to this world and gravity is still a mystery. The ground you know to be completely solid, your foundation, your only constant, is pulled out from under you and you are being pulled through the air by an invisible force with no feasible end in sight – wouldn’t you be fucking livid? Perhaps so terrified you soil yourself the first time this happens? Regardless of the accidental spillage of excrement, I am certain the experience might bring you to tears. And when you finally hit the ground safely, albeit with a bang, you don’t really care that you may have scratched your knee, but you’re so afraid this might happen again, that you can’t stop crying. And then, some unwitting adult in an attempt to make you feel better tells you “that didn’t hurt, get up”, as if the fear you are experiencing is invalidated as an incorrect response and that what you should be feeling is physical pain. Perhaps then, in your shell-shocked state, you feel as if you should be ashamed of your fear, that being afraid is silly.

We all know the adult in this scenario is only trying to make them stop crying by semi-gaslighting them into thinking that they are wrong to let the situation scare them and that everything is just fine and dandy, thinking the pain from the fall is what made them so inconsolable, but I’ve come to think that this is more than a little misguided. That, perhaps, our own conditioning has made us forget the real reason we feel like crying when we are faced with unfathomable or unexpected scenarios. If so, this could be detrimental to our development in a multitude of ways. You’d be inclined to suspect that it has shaped how our society views mental health issues, as well as the medical treatment of psychological symptoms and diseases.

Perhaps our first fall is when we start associating anxiety, fear and anguish with shame and begin to think that it is easier, or even more valid, to deal with physical pain, rather than ailments of our psyche? No wonder people self-medicate with booze, pills, sex or physical trauma in the shape of extreme sports or body art to escape the sort of pain that leads them to shame.

For someone who struggles with psychological pain, physical pain can be perceived as controllable. Being able to endure it can give you a false sense of control. No one can control the scenario your mind creates when you hear things go bump in the night when you’re trying to sleep. But it sure can make you feel like the smallest thing, no matter how big and strong you are.

That’s it for now. Just some food for thought.

See you next Tuesday for a fresh batch of verbal incontinence. I’ll try to use the word control a little less. Meanwhile, you can listen to the live version of the newest The Darkness album, Dreams on Toast, on their Bandcamp by clicking on the album title.

Perhaps you’ll listen to it whilst reading my book, which you can purchase by using the links on my Buy the Book page.

2nd October 2025 0

Life, anxiety and a “sticky” brain

Before we get started on today’s topic, I just want to give a huge, heartfelt thanks to those of you who continue to find the time in your busy day to read my posts – it really means a lot! If this is your first time on here, you can read my previous posts on the main blog page.

Now, for the subject I had planned on writing about last week; unwanted intrusive thoughts. There seems to be a lot of confusion as to what they actually are and how they can manifest, and I have only recently been made aware of the fact that the term isn’t necessarily restricted to just thoughts and images. They are of course what we normally hear or read about, but that’s not the whole picture – it’s not just random thoughts and images. It can include unwanted sensations, memories and stories as well. Possibly more, I really do not know. But I’ve come across a few interesting perspectives and theories on this subject close to my heart that have made me feel a little more enlightened, that perhaps others can find some comfort in as well. BUT. There is, as always, a big dollop of my opinion in here as well, so take everything I say with a pinch of salt. Especially the part about coding. Anyway, that’s the disclaimer out of the way. On with the show.

It seems to me that referring to these uncontrollable impulses or processes as ‘thoughts’ is not only a gigantic misnomer, but hugely misleading, as the phenomenon can be better described as automatically generated impulses or processes that become unwanted when they feel intrusive in an unnerving way, causing distress and excessive rumination. If the brain was a computer, this process could be compared to a constant generation of possible and/or/not responses to any scenario or eventuality one might run into, where the ‘correct’ response – i.e. the action caused by the prompt – is picked based on true/false Boolean logic. Although I flunked out of computer science quicker than you can say 01001110101 20 years ago, this little part of simple coding somehow stuck with me. It works great for simple processes, but a more complex and unpredictable system just might crash once in a while, or let something inappropriate surface by accident.

What I can gather from most of the articles and research papers I’ve come across so far, is that the experts agree that we all have these concurrent processes going on all of the time – it’s completely natural. Which makes sense. Much like a computer that never switches off or reboots, our brain keeps processing and generating impulses that will keep us from switching off. And, much like when we are in the dream state of sleep, some pretty random stuff can manifest from one of the potential responses generated by some event that perhaps entered our subconscious via an advert, a TV show or something we saw out of the corner of our eye when we weren’t really paying attention, seemingly from out of nowhere. Since we did not interact with this event, in that it did not happen to us directly, our reaction (or response) is not necessarily in line with our conscious thoughts, wants or wishes. Needless to say, your mind suddenly doing something so outlandish to you it seems as if you no longer control your urges or behaviour, it can be a jarring experience.

Imagine, for instance, that you’re having a bad dream because you’ve watched A Nightmare on Elm Street, but instead of being chased by Freddy Krueger… you are the monster killer… only, you’re not asleep in your bed – you’re wide awake and thinking about stabbing the person next to you in the lift to death with a rusty blade. And this urge has made itself known despite your pacifist nature and philanthropic views, yet it feels so real, as if you’ve lost all control of yourself and that your sanity hangs on by a thread. Pretty terrifying, right?

Luckily, for most people, a sudden flash of an alternate reality such as this can be shrugged off as what it is; something bizarre, laughable, that would never, ever happen. But for those of us prone to internalising, overanalysing and rumination? When these unwanted intrusive responses land on our particularly sticky brains, it can become a real problem, sometimes leading to self-deprecating behaviour, negative self-talk and suicidal ideation. If you suffer from anxiety or a personality disorder, you might even convince yourself that this means that this is your ‘true personality’ shining through, and the more you think about it, the harder it seems to stick. I won’t go into specifics here, as to what some people can convince themselves to be capable of – it can be all too triggering.

And why focus on the negative, when there seems to be a universal concurrence among experts, that that is absolutely not the case? I mean, if something seems so foreign to you that you’re practically contorted by feelings of repulsion and anger, it is probably not your second nature. If you were to get a song you really hate stuck on a loop in your head, you wouldn’t think that to mean it was secretly your favourite song, would you?

Then, why can it be so difficult to dismiss these impulses when they occur? My guess would be that our anxiety feeds off of such things and it is far too easy to go into that unhealthy spiral of self-doubt and feelings of unworthiness.

Well, how the fuck can I rid myself of this affliction, then? you may ask.

This is where the experts tend to disagree. (Which is why I’ve chosen not to mention any of said experts by name, but I’ll include some links to articles on the subject below, if you want to read more about the different theories). Some say they will only go away if you ignore them, while others say that you simply must acknowledge them before you can let them go. Me? I am inclined to think that there is no cure-all. What works for your aunt Mildred might not work for you, and what works for you will probably not work for your best mate. We are all different, despite being similar in so many ways. But, what I am fairly certain might be a really good idea to do, if you are struggling from the distress brought on by experiencing unwanted intrusive urges, physical sensations, images, scenarios or thoughts, is to talk to a professional about it. You can start by finding a mental health help organisation that can point you in the right direction of someone that understands how debilitating living with something like this can be. Links to articles below.

Support groups in the UK

Mental health support phone service in Norway

Finding a good therapist in the US

That’s all for now. See you next Tuesday for another overshare. Or go buy my E-book – it’s on special offer this week.

Alex Dimitriu, M.D., an expert in sleep medicine and psychiatry, offers some tips on how to tackle – or even stop – unwanted intrusive thoughts in this article.

Read this article on Psychology Today on unwanted intrusive thoughts by Martin Seif Ph.D. ABPP and Sally Winston Psy.D.

Or this one, by the same authors, where they have a closer look at intrusive sensations and stories

How rumination harms your mental health

When Thoughts are Sticky; Pure OCD and Generalized Anxiety Disorder, by Hannah R. Goodman

30th September 2025 0

Statistics, diagnostics and the media – why certain news should only be distributed by experts

This is a double-edged sword. On one hand, we have the right to information that concerns us, yet on the other, the information gathered from these reports is often misinterpreted by uninformed journalists and thus miscommunicated through news outlets that fit their headers to accommodate the most clicks, instead of conveying what the researchers have found. (By uninformed, I mean that most desk journalists lacks the specific expertise to be able to understand properly the context and how scientific research is conducted, not that they are unintelligent.)

Uncritical A/B testing practices symbolises the death of integrity in modern media.

In short, psychological research should be published via professional channels and localised to the target audience, to prevent misunderstandings that can lead to the spreading of false information, or worse; greater socioeconomic inequality.

Because the fact remains, that mental health articles published by your bog standard online news outlet often refers to sufferers from mental (and physical) illness as a ‘them’; a third-person object.

I recently read somewhere, that ‘poor people have mental health issues and mental health issues lead to poverty’. That was the gist of it anyway. With that whole ‘third person’ mentality, one could assume that the tabloid readers and the more affluent members of society will take this to mean that the mentally ill are a burden on society. Maybe even the reason why the economy is in the shitter, so to speak. I am inclined to believe that news sites relying solely on A/B testing to increase their readership make matters far worse in those few instances they’ve got some actual news to report.

It’s the same with any articles on certain diagnoses; they are presented as a peculiar subject, something weird or bizarre, rather than something that affects a lot of people, both directly and indirectly. Of course, so-called reality shows such as The Undateables aren’t helping. And, no, I will not link to such horrific social pornography (for lack of a better term).

The solution to changing how mental illness is viewed is simple; psychoeducation. If the general public was to be presented with proper explanations and definitions by mental health experts, they, WE, would understand that everything is not as black and white as the media presents to us in its current uncaring and often ignorant state.

There are plenty of official networks and non-profit mental health organisations that publish research findings and psychology related news through easily digestible articles, but they are drowned out by the noise. Some of these, however, I will link to at the bottom of this post.

So, why should we care about psychoeducation, especially if we are not experiencing illness ourselves? I’m glad you asked. The World Health Organisation published numbers from 2019, indicating that as many as “1 in every 8 people worldwide are living with a mental disorder“. It would be fair to assume that more than one of ‘1 out of 8’ of us have carers, family or friends, or even colleagues, that are indirectly affected by our illness in some way. Not to mention that a lot of disorders can be hereditary. If we understood everything a little bit better, it might be easier to cope with certain things. Mass media are not the right communicators for this particular job.

Psychoeducation is important in a patient’s journey to recovery from or management of any mental illness, regardless of age. One can argue that it is essential – in order to understand yourself and your condition, you must first understand how it affects you. Science Direct has a more in-depth article on psychoeducation available on their site, if you want to learn more about what this entails.

Furthermore, psychoeducation can provide you with tools for when the mental health services close down after office hours or on bank holidays, which, for some, can be the most challenging parts of the year. As a bonus, proper psychoeducation can help everyone around you to understand things a little bit better as well. Wouldn’t it be nice if the nuanced field of psychology could be presented by someone with a passion for it, rather than someone that’s been told to ‘make the headline clickable’?

That’s probably more than enough for today – and I have some psychoeducation of my own to get back to. Thanks for reading!

See you next Tuesday.

Here’s a list of excellent outlets for those of us who want to learn more about ourselves and our loved ones:

Mental Health Mates UK

I would also like to recommend the following two podcasts, one of which tackles how mental health issues affect our daily lives in delightful, laidback, and sometimes emotional, human conversation, and the other an ADHD specific podcast, which offers interviews with leading experts on the field, as well as well-known guests.

The Life of Bryony

ADHD Chatter

anxiety, depression, economic equality, health, journalism, mental health, mental-illness, statistics, stigma

15th July 2025 0

Apropos of The Big O

Just a year ago now, I was in my 30th year of living (or slowly dying) with the most self-effacing, all-consuming, terrifying disease, that I’ve let dictate my life for as long as I remember; obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).

There’s still, seemingly, a lot of confusion as to what OCD actually is – a lot of people seem to think that it’s synonymous with being a bit anal about tidiness and wanting things to be ‘just so’. Sorry to say, but you couldn’t be more wrong. You can’t be ‘a little bit OCD’. Unless you actually are the disorder, you cannot be it (let’s be honest, this is just a matter of good grammar), and I’d argue that you can’t really have ‘a little bit’ of it either, as this thing can take over your life completely. If you don’t understand it, I am so very happy for you, but if you do, or if someone close to you suffers from OCD, I think you might benefit from listening to one of my favourite pods, that tackles the things in our lives that can be particularly challenging.

So, a year ago, I had been accepted into an intensive treatment programme of said disease, known as the Bergen 4-Day Treatment, and I was a fortnight away from complete upheaval – a massive change – to life as I knew it. A year later, ‘the big O’ is still lurking in the nooks and crannies of my subconscious, like a barracuda in shallow water, but I now possess the techniques to keep it underwater most of the time. Which brings me to the reason why I am writing this post.

This morning, I was listening to Bryony Gordon chatting to Tuppence Middleton about her experience with OCD (link to the podcast episode in the icon below), and I wasn’t long into the episode before I realised I was crying. Tears of relief? Sure. Tears of joy from the fact that there are others like me? Definitely.

Now, don’t get me wrong – I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy. It’s not that kind of ‘joy’. But stuff like this makes me feel like less of an outsider. So I hope that, by sharing this, someone else can find the same solace in knowing that you are not alone.

I cannot recommend this episode enough, if you want some insight into how the human brain can take over and make self-sabotage into something that, to the person, is perceived as a sort of coping mechanism. Which it oftentimes was, at least for me, in terms of my needing some sense of control in a life that had lost all its meaning and needed some structure.

The episode also tackles other important mental health stuff, so if that’s your cup of tea, you just might love this pod as much as I do.

Until next time – E xx

anxiety, Bryony Gordon, health, mental health, mental-illness, ocd, Podcast

21st May 2025 0