Blog

“The past is a door I don’t revisit very often”. I’ve heard this, and similar beliefs on leaving the past behind, over the years. This seems to me like wishful thinking. My own experience is the opposite: the only exit from the past is by going back through it. Pema Chodron writes that “nothing ever […]

When healing trauma, we’re dealing with the contents of our unconscious—which, by definition, are unclear to us. Trying to understand what traumatic events are still alive and kicking in our psyche can lead us into a fog of suspicions, half-truths, or completely mis-read signs. Yet trauma never lies. When we reconstruct the past accurately enough […]

Are you sexually frustrated? If so, has you ever considered that the answer to your sexual frustration might not be sex? Sexual pleasure is life pleasure, and sexual energy is life energy. And, of course, sexual frustration is life frustration. Sexual energy In What is sexual energy? I describe experiments by Wilhelm Reich in the […]

What is sexual energy? It may seem like an odd question, an obvious question, even an unnecessary question. Yet it is the question that unlocks answers to some of life’s deepest mysteries. Sexual energy is high-octane, high-rev life energy colliding with the ‘red line’ of sexual shame. What is sexual energy? What is the energy […]

One of the characteristics of trauma that may seem confusing from the outside looking in, is that the more traumatised we are, the more we defend trauma. However, when we understand how trauma works, this seemingly paradoxical stance reveals itself to be entirely congruent with the emotional mechanics of trauma. The more traumatised we are, […]

In Generational trauma is a frozen fight-or-flight response, I describe how a malfunction of the fight-or-flight mechanism causes trauma, which can then be inherited. I’ll now extend that understanding to show how this fight-or-flight malfunction, on a systemic scale, created our current, dysfunctional social model, patriarchy. Patriarchy arose from the intersection of two elements, a […]

If an alien were to visit our planet at the present time, and read any of the mainstream news outlets, they would have to conclude that humanity is an insane species. We so clearly need to nurture the environment, improve our wellbeing, reduce economic inequality, and end poverty. We know how to do these things, […]

Cities. Home to millions. Situated at the crossroads of the world’s trade routes and natural harbours. Centres of learning and technology. Glittering jewels of human achievement. The pinnacle of civilization. Or not? This perspective is flawed, self-serving—more accurately, self-avoiding. Cities are nothing more than glorified, brightly lit, wealthy refugee camps. Cities are refugee camps for […]

Over the course of my emotional principles blogs, I’ve outlined some of the laws of emotional mechanics that govern our lives. One of the laws that eluded me for a long time—there are no doubt more—is that every interaction happens as a quid pro quo. Every time something happens that isn’t consciously what you want, […]

I recently learned that in 1922 my great-grandfather was jailed for six months for tax fraud, in relation to the hotel where he was the publican. This might seem like a small and perhaps a little unsavoury footnote to my family history. Instead, I realised with a flash that this was perhaps the key event […]