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…
You are not alone I have been reading and listening to Tim Ferriss (if you don’t know who Tim is, see below) for over a decade and found myself curious about his recent interest and investment in the use of psychedelics for the treatment of depression and other psychiatric disorders. What I didn’t know is…
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…
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…
The Patriarchy hurts women in obvious and well-chronicled ways. But how it hurts men is a more covert affair, and is responsible for the uptick in male suicides, particularly in middle-aged males. There is a myth that runs through our culture, one that says a man can shut off his emotions and be an island…
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) has been the talk intervention of choice for treating mental illness for decades. The basis of this treatment is to get the client to take an honest look at the thoughts, feelings and attitudes underlying their belief system so they can decide if the stories they believe about themselves and the…
I’m excited to share with you a segment that CNN did on me for their “Turning Points” series! If you like it, I’d love it if you could share it with your friends 🙂 You can watch my segment here: CNN Turning Points
When I was eleven years old, I had an old road bike that I found in the back of the garage. There happened to be a fabulous rectangular configuration or roads in our neighbourhood that made for the perfect circuit, complete with hills, curves, and straightaways. All summer long I rode this circuit, over and…
Healing is hard work; to this day it is the single hardest thing I have ever done. To face the rage, pain, abandonment and betrayal was an impossible task that was only navigated with a tenuous combination of hope, faith and desire. The flip side is that healing is the gift that keeps on giving,…