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The loneliness of alone
June 10, 2015 | Blog
The loneliness of aloneWhy is being alone so hard for so many? When someone crashes mentally it feels as though they are in a living death that no-one else can have experienced, a torture that...
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Recovery
May 26, 2015 | Blog
RecoveryThis is the third post of a series on childhood sexual abuse, examining what recovery really means. Earlier posts are here and here. Recovery is a word that once had an almost talismanic meaning, a...
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Why the abused becomes the abuser
May 15, 2015 | Blog
Why the abused becomes the abuserThis is part II of a series on childhood sexual abuse. To have the fuller context, here is Part I. It's a survival mechanism, the abused becoming the abuser—simple, crude,...
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The Perversion of Shame that Kills
May 6, 2015 | Blog
The Perversion of Shame that KillsThere is a bitter link between suicide in young men and the sexual abuse of children. It is not the correlation that some might jump to, as in the idea...
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Pathetic Fallacy
April 25, 2015 | Blog
Pathetic FallacyIt's one of those terms usually bandied about by people busy being clever. The standard habitat is under weighty by-lines in highbrow literary reviews, used in reference to something like a particularly perfect Haiku,...
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Sanctuary
April 17, 2015 | Blog
SanctuaryIt is a poignant word, one that needs to be taken hold of for a moment—a fragile thing to be cradled and examined tenderly for what it really means. By that I'm not talking about...
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Beyond Suicide
April 6, 2015 | Blog
Beyond SuicideSuicide is not a decision made from a balanced or rational place, but it is still a choice. The act of suicide is someone deciding that the only choice left is death. Except that...
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Self murder – trying to face the unimaginable
March 28, 2015 | Blog
Self murder – trying to face the unimaginableA man flew a plane into the side of a mountain. He killed himself and 149 other people. It is a statement of fact, and it happened last...
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Let’s talk about text
March 27, 2015 | Blog
Let's talk about textWhy we get so angry and hurt… Complex introductions should act as a warning that you are about to embark on reading a lot of waffle—a bunch of complicated theories that the...
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Altering Ego…some of the lies we tell ourselves and others
March 18, 2015 | Blog
Altering Ego…some of the lies we tell ourselves and othersWhen humour is black it is also very telling. There's the: 'Oh, that's my depression talking' as someone tells a staggeringly negative story about themselves, the...
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Pushing Back
December 1, 2014 | Blog
Pushing BackAt times pushing back against the people who are supporting you can be yet another symptom of anxiety or paranoia, but sometimes it is an early glimmer of recovery There are times when having...
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And what about when the treatment doesn’t work?
November 6, 2014 | Blog
And what about when the treatment doesn't work?A lot is now written about post-traumatic stress, to the extent that most people are familiar with the idea that the deepest wounds of war and violence are...
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