Depression is powerful. It has a voice that makes it difficult to ignore. It demands attention. My father was an old style Principal and he was good at his job. He had a strong control of tone that he could use to make you stand up and take notice. He had a presence that made …
It is hard to explain. It’s difficult to create an explanation of what Depression is like that will resonate because we all experience the world differently. We all have different skills and abilities that will make understanding easier for some and not for others. Still, isn’t part of the purpose of writing to put difficult experience into words that …
The depressed brain is a time machine. It moves constantly between the past and the future looking for salvation. Lost forever from the present, it dwells almost exclusively in failures and fears. The way out is the present moment. The time machine is Mindfulness meditation. If regret is the ‘time/ space continuum’ of mental health, …
The rather technical adjective maladaptive, when used to describe a person, is never a good thing. Essentially, maladaptive means that you don’t cope very well with your circumstances and so you maladapt to accommodate them. You can adapt to circumstances in unhealthy ways, but to be maladaptive is something special. I never considered myself a …
Occasionally, in but a second or two, thoughts can appear, trigger a downward spiral and disappear just as quickly. When you are ‘triggered’ by something, generally it means that the trigger takes you right back to the feelings and emotions of the original incident or problem, be they fear, anxiety or depression. The following short …
“A friend loves at all times and a brother is born for adversity.” Prov 17:17 Few would disagree that true friendship is a cornerstone of a healthy and well-balanced existence. Making friends is almost as natural as breathing when we are young, but surprisingly it seems we lose the ability to bond well with others …
Coping with isolation After a day or two, when everyone has settled into the unnatural routine of lockdown, strange sensory changes begin to emerge in households around the country. When the 6.30am train to the city no longer beckons and when children finally realise that they don’t have to be up in the morning, subtle …
It is a funny thing, to trust. Really trust. Trust is, or at least should be earned. It is at the core of all our higher order emotions and motives. Trust takes a long time to build. Not surface trust, like that in a shelter or a well-made car. No, I mean real trust, in …
The term Mental Health is a well-used phrase these days. Thankfully the cliched stoic, Australian common in the writings of Lawson and Patterson and in the deeply related image of the Bronzed Aussie appears to be going the way of the Dodo. Most of the people I know are beautiful in their fallibility even if …
I read an incredible book on Depression recently titled The Noonday Demon-An anatomy of Depression by Andrew Solomon. The highly intelligent author also gives several moving TED talks on the subject. In one of them, he uses the phrase ‘Depression-The secret we all share’. It is a phrase that was more accurate than I realised …
