We’ve all heard of the fight or flight response, a state where your body prepares for threat by releasing hormones to physiologically and psychologically deal with an imminent threat, or run away from it. But there is a third, often overlooked response called freeze, where you realize your best option is to become immobilized, either…
I can’t say when my anxiety turned into depression, but with hindsight and many years of therapy I know that it goes as far back as I can remember. Long-term anxiety, like the type I lived through as a child, eventually morphs into depression, as feelings of hopelessness and helplessness take over the psyche. Depression…
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…
In 1992 I began what became a two-year process of letting go of street drugs so I could spend more time with my new-found love, climbing. When I give presentations, I inevitably get asked the same question: “Didn’t you just trade in one addiction for another?” And I always give the same answer: Yes, and…
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.…
This post was originally published on April 16, 2019. By August of that year, the central bankers would meet in Jackson Hole Wyoming to vote for their Going Direct Reset. The following month, the U.S. Federal Reserve would intervene in the overnight lending market, and by March 2020 the world would be swept up in…
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…
I never really had female role models growing up. All I remember is seeing those impossibly skinny and perfect models on the cover of magazines, the same magazines you see at the grocery checkout to this day, as a matter of fact. The only models I could even remotely relate to were the ones with…