Tag: mental health

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.

0

Why you should say f*ck off to faking it

Today, I’ll start by giving you a choice; you can see this post as the trivial, banal waffle of a fortysomething spinster, or as a welcome distraction to the soon to be if not already 3rd world war currently monopolising every news broadcast out there. Regardless of your choice, please be aware that I will now be diving straight into a rant, in an attempt to escape the harsher realities of my own existence.

If you’d like something more palatable, I suggest you go watch this episode of Banana Man on YouTube – you can do so by clicking anywhere on this sentence. It is quite delightful. Also, made by actual human beings using their actual minds. Even the voices are real.

Or you can pass START without collecting 100 dollars and instead spend a fiver supporting the poor by clicking on this one.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

We’ve all heard the phrase ‘fake it until you make it’, but as dishonest as such an approach may be – at least it used to come from a place of needing to accomplish something (and more often than not, the fakery came with a valuable learning experience or two). With the rise of AI, however, the faking has become the norm, and what’s more, no one seems to see the need to learn anything, even when it comes to developing a personality. What was initially designed to be a helpful tool to help develop ideas has become the thing that surely will eradicate both art and empathy in modern society. I’m not presenting this as fact, but I’d say it’s a rational fear at the very least. By faking your way through life using nowt but shortcuts and with no desire to add to your skillset, you’re not only lying to the people that have to suffer through your incompetence – you’re lying to yourself. It’s the ultimate injustice. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned about myself (and that this is a common trait for neurodivergent folks), it’s that I cannot stand injustice. Thus, there is no way that faking it to get ahead is the best solution for us.

To those who still don’t get it, I ask you this; what will you do once you reach the proverbial top? You’ve faked your way there and learned fuck all along the way. How the hell do you expect to carry on the charade?

I have chosen this particular topic, as I keep finding myself in positions where I am meant to pick up the ball from where one of these fakers left it, with no trace of them having done any actual work. In one such scenario, I kept asking for an overview of the processes and tasks I was to become responsible for in their absence, and was (after almost a month) presented with a list of links and a Word document with instructions for using software in which I am already proficient. Me being me, I thought I shouldn’t knock it before trying – maybe they had a better way of doing things – but I soon found myself stumped by the inaccuracy of the instructions. So, of course I asked them to clarify. (I’ve been wrong enough times in my life to know better than pretending to get it…). At which they simply replied; ‘oh, it’s easy, I just asked ChatGPT and jotted down the response for you’. No wonder the ‘quick fix’ tips did fuck all!

At least, with a paid version AI, you can get some decent guidelines, but you should probably run a few tests before listing them in an on-boarding document, eh? Also, I’d much rather do a non-assisted search to find three credible sources and take it from there, instead of having to fact-check anything generated by artificial intelligence.

I know I could’ve let this go – perhaps even should’ve, but I ended up wasting so much of my time trying to make use of the so-called instructions (and doubting myself) that I just couldn’t. It would have been better to just crack on the way I always do, and to revise my textbooks and course videos if and when I’d get stuck.

Over the past few years, I’ve seen so much of this and I’ve had enough. Why should people like me get punished for wanting to do the work and, for instance, writing my own CV and cover letter, when fakers, who’d rather sit all day and chat about what colour they’re going to paint the nursery than doing any actual work, get all the jobs they apply for because they don’t bother fact-checking the lies the AI bot has produced by creating a text out of their poorly worded bullet points? GAH.

Hear me when I say that I am quite irate. You’ve poked the bear one too many times. And this is much, much bigger than me being annoyed at lazy fakers.

Imagine, if you will, that something truly horrible happened to you – a crippling illness, or you were wrongfully accused and incarcerated for murder – would you trust a doctor or a public defender that “got “earned” their qualifications by taking shortcuts? Or, if all of the pipes in your house suddenly burst and needed replacing in the middle of winter, would you trust yourself or a partner using AI and YouTube videos to fix it over a certified plumber?

I certainly hope not.

So, what’s this to do with mental health? I hear you ask. Everything, I say.

Initially, I’d left myself a note to write and research how faking it rarely works for those with ADHD and a side of rejection and/or justice sensitivity. You can read more about this in Amelia Kelley (PhD)’s article on Psychology Today: How justice sensitivity amplifies world issues for ADHD.

I didn’t realise this was a thing until I got diagnosed – I’d just always thought I had a strong sense of justice. This helped explain a few things, but mostly why it felt so unnatural and just wrong for me to be faking anything. It’s like lying to yourself, and our need for justice will help our subconscious see through the lies, so we’ll end up feeling as if we’ve effectively tried to pull one over on ourselves. It’s like masking, but when we really don’t have to – or even should. (One could argue that you should never try to hide who you really are, but hey).

Which brings me to the scary, and most of all really quite harmful, side effect of masking: SKILL REGRESSION; defined on Psychology Today as “behavioural “backtracking” or reversion to earlier coping mechanisms that can occur as people progress through different stages of development”.

This was explained in much simpler terms in a podcast episode I listened to the other day (link at the very end of this post), as the regression of skills you learned while masking. Once you get treated for your symptoms and no longer need to mask, some of these skills may even need to be relearned and new neural pathways need to be constructed to help locate the seemingly forgotten skill. (Thank fuck for neuroplasticity, eh?). I wonder if this works for repressed memories as well. Who knows.

Anyway, I am at the end of my rope here and I need to get ready for work. I promised you a link, so enjoy this episode of Hypercast by clicking on the Spotify link below.

See you next Tuesday! There may or may not be a post on suicide recovery and friendship. Stay tuned.

0

Finding calm with a busy brain

Blurry gig photo

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!

0

Advert-induced holiday blues? Nein danke

Krampus, the Christmas demon

Do you ever have one of those days where everything just seems to turn to shit, whatever you do and no matter how well-positioned you are to averting life’s many crises? Yeah, same here. And, somehow, their occurrence appears more bountiful the closer we edge towards to the 25th of December.

If you truly love Christmas, I urge you not to read this. I’m not in the business of trying to ruin things for people who don’t deserve it. Also, this is largely an opinion piece, with very few – if any – links to other sources. If you want something more well-researched and less opinionated, you can buy a copy of my book for yourself, as a wee crimbo gift.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Everything is dark, cold and humid, every cunt on public transportation seems to have left their manners at home and are sneezing into each others gluttonous faces, without even as much as contemplating covering their mouths, and everyone is on a wild hunt for gifts for ungrateful (and very naughty) friends and family members. What was once a celebration of the birth of a bastard nail connoisseur has now become a competition of who can manage to chuck the most of their salary down the toilet in the quickest way possible.

I remember a time when any gifts were reserved for particularly well-behaved children – and often used to make particularly nefarious ones behave – and therefore not procured until after the child had upheld their end of the bargain. There were no guarantees. And if your parents were unable to afford a gift? Well, you’d go without. Perhaps you’d even treasure something homemade.

Today, on the other hand, once humble wishlists have been replaced by demands and shop registries, and friends and relatives of parents and parasite alike are told in no uncertain terms what to get them. The more you spend, the better. No surprises under the tree, and nothing that isn’t currently – or recently has been – trending on TikTok. Anyone not celebrating this atrocious holiday, for religious or economical reasons alike, are either forced to take part or shunned for refusing to spend money on something so appalling. Madness.

Don’t get me wrong – I actually love gift-giving. Hell, sometimes I even enjoy receiving them. BUT. Not just because it’s Christmas. I like to give people something from the heart, something special, so they’ll know that they, too, are special for receiving it. Sometimes that might be something I’ve made, or I’ve come across something that made me think of the person. It shouldn’t really matter. I don’t need someone else telling me what to buy for someone I love, and I don’t appreciate someone (or something) telling them that receiving something that’s not on their list is a bad thing.

It’s the goddamned adverts, man.

And it’s not just the blatant disregard of those who don’t have a whole lot of money to spend on something someone else will look at once before chucking it into a corner, never to be used or played with again. It’s the fact that these so-called Christmas adverts (why not call them what they are; the Q4 adverts? It’s not as if they are reserved for the last month of the year) sends the not-so-subliminal message that everyone has someone to spend the holidays with. Everyone can afford the foods, the treats, the fucking meaningless bloody decorations, the electric bill matched only by that of all of fucking Paris. And it is literally impossible to escape the madness, should you want (or need) to – the adverts are everywhere. On streaming services, public transportation, the supermarket, billboards and the blooming airport.

So, what does it do to those of us that simply have no time for this farce of a religious holiday? If you are a believer of the Christian faith, surely you must be appalled? The Christ mass has become nothing other than a golden calf. Then there’s those of us that for various reasons have no family of our own, or you have a non-related chosen family that does take part in the celebration. We’re normally used to, and most of us even quite content with, spending time alone, but now were bombarded with signs that there’s something wrong with us and that we are on the outside of society looking in.

Lifestyle by Homecare Services reported in 2024 that “1 in 4 adults in the UK feel lonely during the Christmas period. 52% of older people say that Christmas is the loneliest time of the year”. An article posted by Boise State University that same year, revealed that 61% of Americans experience “sadness and loneliness” during Christmas time. Imagine, if you may, how bad it must be for someone, when they’re ready to admit that. In fact, I am willing to bet that there’s at least another 10 per cent unaccounted for, in each of those surveys, that feel the same way but are not willing to subject themselves to scrutiny for revealing it.

Surely, you don’t feel any less lonely or sad when every time you go into the supermarket or a shopping centre, there’s Christmas music and images of people enjoying the holiday time and lots of people drinking and carolling and desperately clinging on to traditions that can be potentially harmful in the future, for our mental health, the economy and the environment. It just escalates the differences between us. It’s not ideal for anybody, not even those who are on the receiving end of your hard-earned money.

As you may have already gathered, around this time of year, I start thinking about what it will be like to spend Christmas on my own. A lot of us do – I’m under no illusion that I’m unique. Some of us may have chosen this ourselves, whereas others have not. And each year, if we are to believe the statistics presented in the articles above, there’s more of us. Some of us are… fine with this. I’d say most of us are fine with this, but then we’re bombarded with this illusion that everybody has to have that family connectedness, the food, the togetherness, which then leads our feeling as if we’re missing out on something.

I don’t have any solutions for this, other than trying to make my own little ritual and giving myself things to look forward to, that I can enjoy when “everyone else” is celebrating. And who’s to say you can’t celebrate on your own? Being alone doesn’t have to mean you can’t have a nice dinner and decorate your house. It’s just a little challenging to stand by your own conviction when you can’t even switch the radio on without getting Grinch-blamed.

Christmas is not my cup of tea. I don’t like the food noise, the greed, the fighting that comes from the consumerist fuckery, the endless need to numb the fact that you’ve spent more money on gifts for people whose names you can hardly remember than you have on the dentist in the past decade with alcohol… But I look forward to the things that I can do when no one else is around. I can sit down and watch a horror movie (or 10). I can go for a really long run and not have to worry about traffic. I can finally get some work done, because everybody else is off and I can do my work uninterrupted, or I can catch up with others like me. Or I can just learn to enjoy the solitude. I’ll just have to stay away from the TV, the adverts, the bus, the fucking shop, because they will get to you. They’re incessant and there’s constant noise.

And if I at some point hear the box of wine start calling my name, I thank fuck that the wine shop is closed for the hols and that I’ve got Bryony and Millie to keep me company – all I need to do is listen to their ADVERT FREE podcast episode on how to deal with all of the booze noise, and you can too if you click on this sentence.

You can read about how advertisers lure their way into your subconscious on Psychology Today by clicking this sentence.

Go to Mind.org.uk for tips on how to cope over the holidays, and learn more about others like yourself.

See you next Tuesday, for a shiny new rant.

In the meantime, you can listen to Bad Religion‘s Christmas album.

0

Is this love…

… that I’m feeling? Not bloody likely, research says. If you’re anything like me, that is. But as it turns out, I’m far from unique in this respect.

You might recognise the words above as lyrics from the 87′ Whitesnake hit ballad Is This Love – if not, you should click on this sentence to watch the original video on YouTube. My undying love (?) for David Coverdale is such that I have every intention of naming my dog after him, once I can get my hands on an Airedale Terrier. Regardless, it is a fantastic song, as all-encompassing as the feeling itself, and one I’ve wailed along to countless times. But was it really love that I felt all of those times, that led to my heartbreak? Or was it in fact limerence, which is more akin to symptoms of withdrawal than love. Whatever that is.

As you may probably already be acquainted with ‘love’, I won’t waste a lot of time going on about it. I’m quite fond of Strapping Young Lad‘s definition; “a way of feeling less alone“. Urban Dictionary has posted a few rather interesting definitions. One of the few I liked (you can read all of them by clicking here) goes as follows: “Love is beyond the ego. There is no ego when you love.”

The above is enough for me to assume that no one really knows how to define ‘love’. Perhaps it’s just one of those feelings that shouldn’t be analysed? Of course people had to go and shit on it by trying to pigeonhole it.

And then, of course, someone decided there is such a thing as a ‘one true love’ for everyone out there. Which resulted in a whole lot of entertaining film and literature, which a lot of people has taken to be something other than entertainment – perhaps even a sort of manual for how love works – and then went on to drill that into the heads of their unsuspecting offspring, leading to a lot of unnecessary heartache, resentment and social awkwardness.

See, the romantic relationships often presented in popular books and movies are so over the top you can’t help but be a little mesmerised. But surely you wouldn’t expect to find the Sam to your Annie on Tinder, swiping away and getting his leg over with every Tara, Doris and Helen, when he’s meant to be your one?

Art is meant to make you feel something, to give you a temporary escape from reality for an hour or two, or even be inspired to do something you’ve always wanted to – everyday life will very rarely give you that over the course of 300 pages or 90 minutes. So the main characters have to fall in love over a week’s time. Or at first sight. Or go from enemies to lovers seemingly by the drop of a hat – or pair of knickers. But that doesn’t mean it works that way in real life.

Things take time, for the most part. I am aware there are exceptions to the rule, but in most cases – and certainly with folks who tend to emotionally dysregulate – any instant fireworks are likely to be limerence and not much else. And that shit wears off faster than you can get rid of the STIs you contracted from hopping into bed (or onto the pub toilet) with mister/ms/they/them right within minutes after meeting them, because why would you need to use contraceptives if they are ‘the one’? That means they are practically a virgin, right? Or at least that you’re the only person they’ve ever managed to penetrate without any love gloves, right?

Wrong. In-cor-rectum.

I’m not saying I don’t believe in ‘the one’. In fact, I’d really like to think that there’s a person out there just for me. But if there is, I am a hundred percent sure that they won’t make me feel as if I am suffocating when I’m not breathing in the same air as him, that I’m missing a limb when we are apart, that I’ll die if he’ll ever leave me. Limerence makes you feel like that. And, despite my mother telling me it is “not possible to fall in love with someone who doesn’t feel the same way about you”. And so I walked the earth for a total of 41 and a bit years before realising that not everyone feels this way about things. Or, indeed, people.

So, I held on to the lies, until I rather recently naïvely exclaimed to a friend this summer: “You know, that feeling when you’re thirteen and have a crush on someone and you feel as if you’re gonna die – when you just know” – and they didn’t. Know, that is. In fact, they very gently but firmly informed me that this was a bit of a pink flag, if not all red. Which led me to purchase Kerry Cohen’s Crazy For You, through which I first came across the term (if you have a complicated relationship with love, I suggest you give this book a read).

Psychologist and love researcher Dorothy Tennov coined the term back in the 60s or 70s, to describe the intense infatuation or ‘love madness’ one can experience when it is not yet known if the romantic feelings are being reciprocated by the other person. This early phase of ‘love’ can be defined by symptoms such as “intense euphoria, a profound sense of emotional connection, mood swings, intrusive thoughts, over-arousal, obsessive infatuation and involuntary craving for the other person”.

More recent studies have shown this to be not uncommon, but for most people it wears off and develops into a real bond once a consenting relationship has been established. For others, like me, the unreciprocated obsession is often replaced by feelings of disgust or self-loathing. In any event the feelings are reciprocated, limerence wears off without turning into lasting love in about 18 months.

But this doesn’t just apply to romantic relationships. I get this feeling whenever I am faced with the prospect of something new and exciting, whether that’s a new job, a potential platonic friendship, a shiny new education, or something as banal as a packet of salt and vinegar flavoured Monster Munch.

Alas, when these feelings are not reciprocated (or my craving for the non-romantic prospects above remains unfulfilled), the poor limerent sod is left in a mental state that interferes with their day-to-day. An all-encompassing, undying desperation takes hold of the individual. Perhaps you miss work, because you are waiting up all night for them to call, or you spend all your savings on grand gestures to make them see that you mean business.

Hell, I once took off work, booked a flight and a hire car just because the person in question – whom I’d known for precisely one month by that point – doubted my ‘love’ for them. I’ve moved across the kingdom for someone I thought was ‘the one’, because they had mentioned, half-jokingly, that we’d probably be together if we didn’t live so far apart. (And, like me, they didn’t care much for the adventures of Harry Potter). I had 500 grams of Candy Corn shipped from the US, the special delivery alone costing me nearly 60£, just because I felt as if I couldn’t go another day without the flavour in my mouth. That’s not love. That’s obsession. Not like Stephen King’s Misery levels of obsession, but still. Close enough.

I’m not entirely sure where I was going with this – one can only assume that I felt inclined to explain my chosen singlehood in more scientific terms; I’m not getting myself into any more shit until I learn to differentiate between real attraction and, well, fatal attraction.

The jury might still be out on this one, but I am quite certain that I have yet to experience the privilege of being in love. Like never before, I find kinship and solace in the unforgettable words of Joni Mitchell:

It’s love’s illusions I recall, I really don’t know love at all

That’s it for now. I shall see you next Tuesday – if you’ve any topic suggestions for my next post, leave it in a comment below, or drop me a message on Instagram.

Oh – and check out my book, please xx

0

A gift for those dreading the holidays

It’s Sunday, so I’ll keep it brief – this is just a bit of blatant self promotion anyway. And, boy, do we get enough of adverts thrown at us around this time of year, eh? Anyway, this post will be dedicated to the story of Hannah; Journey to the Centre of the Mind – a Particularly Mental Gap Year, and why you should bring it into your life if you haven’t already done so.

The two pieces of feedback I’ve received most often from my readers is that A: The book is almost impossible to put down, and therefore a quick read, even for the slower readers out there, and B (possibly most importantly): Hannah’s story lets them know that it’s not just them having a shit time of it – other people struggle with some level of the same shit too – that black dog can be an impossible beast to tame if you’re doing it alone.

This book is for the ones that know that there are layers to every feeling, that any tiny speck of happiness rarely comes without a tiny sliver of guilt, the outsiders, the ones buckling under the pressure of society’s expectations (or their own expectations), it’s for those who don’t have anyone they trust enough to share their stories with, those who feel so out of place that it feels as if the universe is working against them. And for those that are trying too hard to be a good friend to someone who struggles, and end up pushing them away in their misinformed attempt at helping.

In my humble attempt at persuading you to buy a copy of my book, I will share with you what made me write this in the first place.

I occasionally go searching for that terrible review that’ll crush my dream of any writing career. Squinting so heard that I can barely see – in sheer terror of what I might find – I type the title of my book into the search engine. The last time I did this, though, I was pleasantly surprised – to say the least. One might even suggest that I did the same search on a few different devices and in incognito mode before accepting the reality of the fact; three 5-star ratings on Goodreads, and two reviews that brought tears of joy (and relief) to my eyes. One of them posted by the magnificent Jess of The Next Chapter fame. You can read the reviews on Goodreads by clicking anywhere on this sentence.

My book is print on demand only (because I like trees), so if you feel like giving someone a different book for Christmas this year, you need to order it by the 5th to get it from the printer’s on time – it’s available in most countries and I’ve collected a few links for you if you click on this sentence.

The Ebook, however, is of course instantly available if you find yourself searching for something special on the day itself. I’ll include the link again here, as a lot of the outlets above offer up the electronic version as well.

Should the reviews inspire you to grab a different Christmas – or Hanukkah – gift this year, for yourself or someone you thing might need it, you have until the 5th of December to get it back from the printing press at Books on Demand in time, using the links above.

If you prefer reading your literature on an E-reader, the electronic version is cheap as chips on most platforms.

In the famous words of Skeletor: Until we meet again!

(Yes, Tuesday, as per)

0

Single and forced to mingle

Recently, big business found yet another way for consumerism to separate us from our wages, under the guise of discounts and special offers in celebration of a new (to me, at least) money making scheme/unofficial global shopping holiday; singles’ day. As far as I can tell, the tradition goes back a decade or two, as a celebration for people that are not in relationships to come together for a fun time, but I refuse to put the phrase into my search engine to find out how old this new organised shopping frenzy is. Regardless, I suspect this capitalist take on the event has been created to make room for the useless shite shops, hotels and airlines need to stock their digital shelves with for Black Friday.

I would have applauded the celebration, had it actually celebrated singlehood and single folks. It would have been great, had the offers and discounts been exclusive to those of us ‘fortunate’ enough to pay our bills by our sorry selves – living alone is bloody expensive – yet that’s of course not how it works. Not only can married/coupled folks benefit from the same singles’ day ‘offers’ as those of us sans soulmates – I even received an offer from a travel agent (that will remain unnamed) via email, where they offered me an “even better discount” if I was “travelling with a partner”. Another email explicitly said “don’t worry if you’re not single, these discounts applies to you as well, as long as you use the code XX”. What the fuck?

So, as a single person, I am expected to pay more for my flights and accommodation when I travel somewhere by myself all year around, but couples can save more on a deal – a deal that exists because of single people – than the actual single solo traveller? Why should they get my discount on the one day out of the year where businesses could have done something nice for us and let us save a few bucks on something that’s not in bulk, for once? But no. Once again, the singleton is reminded of their place in society and capitalism is the ultimate victor. Enough, already.

I get it. The economy is fucked. But that doesn’t justify screwing us over. Just because we’re used to not getting any, doesn’t mean that we’ll happily lie down and take it when offered the chance.

And with this, I find myself at what inspired my little rant today; the difference between consent and compliance. By no means do I claim to be the first person to point out the fact that there is a difference – I will gladly admit that my inspiration comes from not one but two podcasts I’ve been listening to lately (Speaking of Psychology and MissUnderstood/Sorry, I Missed This), I just found that their take on it made me see some of my past mistakes in a new light. Additionally, being able to differentiate between the two will never not be important.

If you’re missing the logical connecting step from shopping to consent here, I will list a few of the reasons why I am single (and have been for most of my life).

  1. Non-singles and ‘normal’ singles alike tend to assume that all single folks are tirelessly and desperately looking for ‘their person’. Whilst many are doing precisely that, there are also those of us who have found the one we would like to be with, but like with many of the universe’s cruel jokes, our beloved does not be-love or even be-like us back, or they are simply in a relationship already. So me being the way I am (i.e. possibly a smidge hyperfocused on anything and everything that manages to tickle my fancy) will more often than not be inclined to wait patiently for their relationship to peter out before making a move and/or moving on. There’s a need to know if they would feel the same if they could. In short, it’s not my lacking the ability to find someone, or having impossibly high standards. Nay, for me to give up my life for a relationship, I need it to be with a person that I actually like enough for me to feel as if I’m not giving anything up at all.
  2. It’s about the person, not the relationship. It seems a lot of people are desperate to be in a relationship. So desperate, in fact, that they suffer through physical violence and psychological warfare, prostitution, childbirth, vasectomies, you name it. They just want to show the world that someone chose them. But, did they, though? Noooooo thank you. Also, I quite like the peace and quiet. Next!
  3. Then there’s the rejection sensitivity that comes with my ADHD, and the RSD, the misguided attempts at second guessing every move, over analysing every word, every movement, my forty years of being told that other people’s needs are far more important than my own, which incidentally has caused me to gaslight myself into thinking that compliance is consent.

As you can tell, it is probably best that I stay away from the relationship game. I have been in too many situations where I’ve felt as if I had to choose between having to deal with a negative reaction if I’d said ‘no’ or accepting the awful feeling of guilt that would come from not meeting their needs and having them hate me on top of it. There was no way I could win. Just the thought of hurting them hurt me more than the pain that they – and, to some extent, I – put me through. I’ve been too afraid to go to the police when I should have done, on more than one occasion, just because I couldn’t handle the thought of the implications it would have for my attackers. Why I didn’t think as far as what damage they would be able to do to others when they were able to walk free is beyond me – I guess I just assumed that I was the only sort of person that would deserve being treated that way. No one in their right mind would do such horrible things to someone pretty, someone nice, someone that’s worth something. But I’ve realised now, that it’s not only us uggos that get raped. Unfortunately, it seems a lot easier for people to believe the pretty ones.

Now, I’m not saying romance is dead. Quite the opposite! And I have a lot of lovely couple friends that have great relationships. I think they deserve all the love in the world. I’m just saying that on singles’ day, they can back off and leave the special offers to those of us that don’t have anyone to split the rent with. I promise not to take any of their valentine’s day thunder. And, who knows – perhaps there’s love on the cards for me as well?

Yes, I am looking at you, Michael Palin.

It’s late! We should all go to bed. But before you do, remember to buy a copy of my book – if you want it by crimbo, you’ll need to order it by the 5th of December.

Next week, I’ll write a little something about limerence. See you next Tuesday!

0

Bridging the gap

The structure you see looming over what may or may not look like a portal to an alternate universe took just over three years to complete. The bridge it replaces had served as a link between the two sides of the city centre since the 1930s. With the bridge gone, it was as if a great divide appeared in the wake of the demolition – at least from a commuter’s point of view. Sure, there were pedestrian crossings nearby, but no direct bus link or road access, unless you fancied the deluxe version of the scenic route. The new bridge sure is a sight to behold, though. Also, very functional and bridge-like.

I’m not entirely sure where I was going with this – I just like the photo.

And I am blocked.tae.feck. Not just writer’s block, but blocked in every sense of the word. You may wonder how that came about. Or, perhaps you’re wondering why I am so dead set on trying to squeeze out a few paragraphs anyway. Well, here’s why; it’s not just my liking the photo that has compelled me to pound the keys so ate in the evening – the thing is that I constantly find myself expecting everyone to expect me to bridge the gap for them, the way I always used to. I am overwhelmed, with being underwhelmed. And, being overwhelmed really trips me up, so I am inclined to think that I’m not the only one. Yes, I said I was going to write about menopause, but then I just thought to myself; why the hell would I do that, when there’s more interesting things to write about the sex life of the albatross (spoiler alert, they are NOT monogamous, at least if we’re to believe the Ocean Conservancy), or, indeed, some random bridge I decided to shoot from a weird angle.

Looking up at this massive structure, expected to be strong enough to hold the weight of the world, and at the same time be diplomatic and pleasant enough to bring opposites together, I guess something struck a nerve.

I cannot begin to describe just how bizarre it feels when you start recognising cyclical aspects to your own personality. My psychoeducation and treatment has lent me the ability to somewhat objectively observe my own behaviour in a way where I can now almost foresee my actions and reactions before they manifest, but with no means to stop them from happening. Yet, anyway.

There are hundreds of articles on ADHD overwhelm online. On Beyond BookSmart, we learn that “ADHD overwhelm can essentially lead to you feeling frustrated and upset with yourself, causing you to shut down completely, both mentally and emotionally”. Check. The Attention Deficit Disorder Association wrote about how overwhelm can lead to ADHD paralysis and ways to get past it. Others refer to ADHD overwhelm as ‘flooding’. Basically, those of us with emotional dysregulation and/or RSD can get so overwhelmed by our own emotions and environments that we shut down completely. Check, check, check.

I can get so overwhelmed by the one thing on my list that I’ve not managed to check that it feels like the items I did check don’t really matter. Because I do get shit done. Quite a lot of shit, actually, but that one little thing – even if it’s something as silly as booking in for an eye test – makes it impossible for me to move forward with the speed I expect from myself if I keep putting it off. It makes me feel like a failure. It doesn’t matter if I managed to solve 13 Rubik’s cubes in 3 minutes, or if I’ve submitted research that helped cure bowel cancer that same day, everything becomes irrelevant due to my inability to do get the easy, less important, tasks out of the way first.

It is almost 23.15pm and I’ve one more thing to check off my list before I go to bed, so I am going to take the fourth advice on the ADD’s list to heart and “focus on completion, not perfection”. I have a billion thoughts and ideas still fighting over the limited space in my shell-shocked noggin, so I will no doubt be back with something hopefully a little more profound next week. Just need to bridge a few gaps first. Make sense of some stuff. Until then, there’s a new Catharsis album out that I quite enjoyed. Link below.

See you next Tuesday! Oh, and there’s more substantial ramblings in my book, of course. Check it out by clicking on this here sentence.

1

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.

0

Hair today – gone tomorrow

Pulled out hair next to a computer keyboard

– What..? Why are you shouting at me? What’s going on? Hannah squirmed in the ancient armchair, trying to decipher her mum’s facial expression. For some reason, she just kept shouting at her:

– Can’t you see the mess you’re making?! The floor is filthy with your greasy strands… it was clean an hour ago! her mum barked, red in the face now. Of course the floor had been squeaky clean, Hannah had only just finished the weekly deep-clean and had finally been able to sit down for a second and not worry about cleaning everything twice (God forbid she’d clean something in odd numbers, so she’d probably cleaned everything at least four times, if not six). Still, she looked around to see if she’d missed something, and when her gaze fell on the floor under her left hand, she had a start – the knock-off hardwood floor was covered in hair. Hannah went to touch the side of her head, as if to check she hadn’t completely lost the plot. Shit! Another bald spot. And all she’d done was sit down and zone out for just a second.

Hannah had been 16 when that happened – the big, ugly thing that had them ship her off to the child psychiatrist’s, who only managed to make things far worse than they had been in the first place, but that’s a story for another day.

The pile of hair on Hannah’s floor was a result of a type of incessant hair-pulling, a condition that had started to affect her everyday life in a major may, typically categorised as a body-focused repetitive disorder (BFRD) called trichotillomania. Many might think that the disorder only applies to the pulling and removal of one’s head hair, as that would be quite noticeable, but it applies to all hair on the human body, from eyelashes to leg and pubic hair.

You can learn more about trichotillomania, other body-focused repetitive disorders and the specifics by listening to the episode Speaking of PSYCHOLOGY did on BFRD by clicking anywhere on this sentence. I will leave a link to the podcast episode at the bottom as well.

Why am I writing about this, you ask? Well, because it is still something that has a lot of stigma and therefore isn’t really talked about or even diagnosed, unless the patient mentions it themselves. Even then, some professionals may not have heard about the condition. Also, if you search for it on line, almost every single one of the top 10 hits will be misleading.

Additionally, there’s a lot of misconceptions around it, as it (and other body-picking disorders) is often overlooked and/or attributed to something else, like an aspect of obsessive compulsive disorder (it is a common comorbidity), low self-esteem, et cetera.

This means there has not been extensive research on the matter. Funding has been pulled from a trichotillomania therapy programme and reallocated towards the OCD clinic at the University Hospital in Norway. But this is a very real disease. It can ruin a person’s life. And it’s not vanity or even picking at something that needs to be removed, it’s an urge that won’t go away. It’s not new either, we can actually track it as far back as ancient Greece. Yet, we still haven’t determined whether it’s \just another anxiety disorder’, or if it’s a different beast entirely.

Luckily, there are people brave enough to take matters into their own hands and shed some light on this. Things are finally about to change, thanks to Oxford professor Clare Mackay and her upcoming book (expected on 2nd April 2026): Keep Your Hair On: Understanding Urges to Pick, Pull or Bite.

Another brave person that’s helped put trichotillomania in the spotlight in recent years – and, in my opinion, helped starting to normalise it – is the fantastic force that is Amy Schumer. In the Hulu series Life & Beth (with a link to the show’s Instagram below), she portrays a young woman that suffers from the disorder. Schumer’s performance is such that you can’t help but get under Beth’s skin. She’s so relatable, and at the same time unique. She’s impossible, yet entirely lovable. Beautiful, yet hardened to fuck by life’s lemons. Wild, yet longing for stability. Much like you or me. (Unless you are an AI robot – one that’s not Gigolo Joe – Because, if you are, you can fuck right off). If you haven’t yet, you should watch it for the casting alone. It’s wonderfully raw, but at the same time uplifting, in a weird way. And the show demands attention towards something that I am very passionate about; seeing mental health issues as something other than someone else‘s issues.

Personally, I cannot wait for another season (please, please, Amy!). Meanwhile, I will continue reading my Stephen King book, also in anticipation of Professor Mackay’s 2026 outing.

See you next Tuesday!

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑