One of the hallmarks of mental distress is fragmentation. Emotions are heightened, especially fear, and the mind becomes disordered as it deals with a level of stress it has rarely, if ever, encountered. Meaning falls apart; confusion and uncertainty take its place. The once solid ground underfoot turns into shifting sands beneath one’s feet. Those…
I don’t recall the exact age I suffered my first panic attack, but I do remember how it felt. As my chest tightened and my breathing became shallow, my oxygen level dropped, and I thought I was going to die. Breathing is fundamental to life, and when it gets restricted, for whatever reason, we fear…
There is an invisible architecture of power in our society that is at the root of all forms of abuse, whether it is racism, bullying, or intimate partner violence. A global term for this epidemic is Sociopathic Narcissism, or in the case of the following story, what turned into Psychopathic Narcissism. With the murder of…
One minute it’s a pandemic of the unvaccinated, and the next thing you know the vaccinated are variant super-spreaders who are responsible for ushering in end times. One person accuses the other of stockpiling livestock medicine, while that other believes we’re all being secretly fed self-spreading vaccines via Mexican tomatoes. As ludicrous as some of…
Thoughts are choices, and they have power. They collect in the psychic atmosphere forming clouds that explode into the theatre of events once they have gained enough momentum. Most people are unconscious of how to wield this creative force, believing instead that they are passive witnesses to events happening outside of, and unrelated to, them.…
As World War II came to an end, Nazi psychiatrists interviewed families to see if there was a difference between those who had sent their children to the safety of the countryside to live with relatives, and those who kept their children with them in the cities as bombs dropped around them. What they found…
This article was first published in the Summer 2020 edition of The Arete, the magazine for the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides (ACMG). Mt. Assiniboine “Long Shadows, Tall Peaks” Photo: Paul Zizka Mental Fitness in Times of Crisis In times of high stress, we can learn something from that most excessive state, and those who…
Once I understood that nothing outside of me was stronger than what was inside of me, I was able to see every situation as a chance to change. And I realized this one night, on the shores of Moose Lake. One year before I got busted, I dated a carpenter named Doug. Doug had bright…
I have been watching a disturbing trend gaining momentum in North American circles over the past ten years, a trend I have dubbed “Bipolarism.” I first noticed it bubbling up at dinner parties, where a guest would be chastised for not championing the social cause of the day. Intellectual rigour wasn’t embraced, in its stead,…
It was a dark, wet coastal night, and Michael and I were on our way home from the Bird Cage, his favourite restaurant. That wasn’t its real name, we just called it that because it had forty-foot ceilings. “Lots of headspace,” Michael would say, “so you can get some thinking done.” We walked along the…