What people call ADHD, anxiety, depression, PTSD, or suicidality often feels subjectively similar from the inside: a mind that will not quiet, disengage, or return to the present. The default mode network is most active during self-referential thinking, memory, future simulation, and narrative identity. When its activity becomes persistently noisy, rigid, or poorly regulated, internal […]
The word “narcissist” has quietly shifted from a clinical diagnosis into a cultural pejorative. On social media it now functions as shorthand for all previous partners, strict parents, demanding bosses, selfishness, emotional immaturity, infidelity, or simply being difficult. This shift matters. When a diagnostic label becomes a moral judgement, it blurs the line between personality
Beyond the Brain: Pat Bracken’s Case for Post-Psychiatry Over the past two decades, a group of psychiatrists and philosophers have argued that modern mental health care has become overly dominated by technological and biological thinking. One of the most influential voices in this movement is Pat Bracken, whose work helped define what became known
When I tried to find help, I was at the lowest point of my life – I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t think. I looked – I really looked for help – my wife really looked! But, it was no good! I kept asking “What was wrong with me” and “How can they help me?” nothing
You would think that receiving a diagnosis from a doctor would, to some extent, be a relief but for many people who are struggling with mental health problems, it is both surreal and, at the same time, claustrophobic. From this moment on, your entire life will be confined by a psychiatric label but what does
Some people emigrate and love the expat lifestyle but as the years go by many struggle. Depression, anxiety and insomnia are very common and not easy to write off as just “missing the family”. Getting diagnosed late in life with a psychiatric label is a shock. It confirms what you suspected “it’s your fault”, “you’re
When it was bad, my mind was like a raging river and Therapy was like someone swimming beside me asking me to remember who had pushed me in and what I would like to say to them! It wasn’t until I found a rope that I was able to save myself.
In this last article, of the three part series, concerning empathy, I will explain how therapists and front-facing mental health professionals can systematically develop their natural empathic capacity through a series of phased mind & body exercises; this will include a brief description of how Compassionate Insight is used to support a client’s natural healing
Why EMDR doesn’t work for complex PTSD and what actually does Dr Sophilia Lark, the founder and CEO of Unified Wholeness Lifestyle, made a video 5 years ago about EMDR and the reasons why it does always help people who have suffered from complex trauma, particularly PTSD. In many ways, Sophilia is the kind of
Werewolves in legend and myth may be our earliest record of our ancestor’s attempts at understanding DMN Dysregulation and its associated behavioural rupture. In the Arcadian myth of Lycaon, described in the Metamorphoses by Ovid, Lycaon commits a grotesque violation. Here in Spain, Manuel Blanco Romasanta was accused of lycanthropy due to the extreme level
