I can’t fail to notice how events like mass shootings continue to capture the public imagination, as though they come out of nowhere and are one-off occurrences. Nor can I fail to notice how each time one occurs, the masses of the citizenry are more than eager to define the perpetrator of such an event…
“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls a Butterfly.” – Richard Bach Personal transformation cannot occur while we are busy conforming to a status quo, because deep transformation happens in the wilderness of our psyches, in that place beyond the social programming of our culture. It takes courage to transform,…
At the age of twenty-two I stood at one of the most important crossroads of my life: on the one hand I was being diagnosed manic-depressive by my psychiatrist and offered pharmaceutical drugs to deal with my condition, while on the other hand I had just read a convincing book that stated that my depression…
They say that every character in a Woody Allen film is a reflection of his neurotic self, and Blue Jasmine is no exception. Kate Blanchett gives a superb performance playing a woman who goes from “super-wealthy socialite” to “broke middle-aged divorcee” after she calls the FBI on her real-estate mogul husband when she finds out…
It’s one of the greatest philosophical debates in the world, and THE fundamental question in the mental health field: Is mental illness a hardware problem (faulty wiring), or a software problem (running faulty programming?) In the first instance, there is no cure except drugs, which is not really a cure because when you take the…
When I was moving through my journey of addiction and depression, I quickly realized that my culture could not provide me with a template for healing. I knew that in order to do this, I would have to think outside the tribe, and create my own. Tribal beliefs are those beliefs that members of a…
There has been a recent slew of blogs and posts online about how women are portrayed in the outdoor industry by the very companies selling them products and inviting them to events. This has caused the usual backlash from women who are insulted for being portrayed for their sexuality instead of their accomplishments. There are…
#1 They know how to take an honest look at themselves. Because suicide is the most sincere form of self criticism, pride and arrogance, as a means of holding a fragile ego together, have long been abandoned. #2 They give credence to what Jean-Paul Sartre terms “nothingness.” Some of us prefer the term “emptiness”, but…
Ever since I started ice climbing I’ve had to listen to people tell me that “all ice is the same.” For eighteen years, I ignored these people. But two years ago, as I was driving along the Icefields Parkway looking up at the smatterings of ice along the rock cliffs, I realized that it was…
The best word I can use for the state called suicidal depression is despair. It is a state of complete disconnection and isolation from everyone and everything, a state where life is no longer worth living. Life was monochromatic, devoid of colour or brightness. There was no beauty in the world, only pain and suffering.…