responsibility

What is emotional responsibility? It’s the Holy Grail. Eldorado. The X-factor. It’s what’s buried at the ‘X marks the spot’ on the pirate map. It’s the thing that U2 still hadn’t found when they released that cracking single a couple of decades back. I doubt if they’ve found it yet. Emotional responsibility is perhaps the […]

As I write this, coronavirus is sweeping the globe, public trust in the UK government has collapsed and the streets of America are full of rage. So is my social media feed: “It’s only 8.15am and I’m seething,” a friend posted recently—and it wasn’t even in response to any of these headline issues. Another friend […]

As I walked along a grass verge recently, a man approached, smoking a cigarette. He dropped the cigarette, crushed it with his heel and strode past exhaling smoke. He’d just polluted the environment. He had also polluted himself. What struck me was that he was completely oblivious of both. It is written in the Vedas, […]

All the solutions you seek are inside you. It’s one of those pithy sayings floating around the Internet and popping up in annoying Facebook memes. A colleague used to call them “inconvenient.” They’re inconvenient because they’re true: it’s easier to look for solutions ‘out there’—pointing the finger at someone else, asking them to change—than ‘in […]

Australian Channel Nine newsreader Samantha Heathwood has acquired celebrity status after images of her wearing a jacket with a penis-shaped neckline went viral in early January 2019. The jacket makes Heathwood appear as if she has a large phallus dangling from her neck with its tip nestling between her breasts. Heathwood follows in the footsteps—if […]

Over the Christmas period I was offered a chocolate with the rider that “you can only have one if you’ve been good.” The admonition was no doubt intended as a joke, but it fell flat when I realised the emotional implications of the traditional Christmastime division of children into naughty and nice. Naughty or nice? […]

When it comes to porn therapies, there are two ways you can go. The first is the way that most of us unconsciously drift into—symptom management. We try to stop watching porn, first by a simple act of will: “No, I’m not going there. All right, I’ll watch a little porn—but on a timer. I’ll […]

In all walks of life, we are encountering triggered individuals or an increasingly regular basis. Whether it’s on social media, at home, at work, at the supermarket or a random incident of road rage, emotionally ‘hot’ situations are on the rise. How do we handle a triggered person face-to-face? In 5 Signs of a triggered […]

I recently wrote a post called 5 Signs of a triggered person. Feedback on the post was very positive, but commenters asked for advice on handling triggered individuals online. Well, here it is. The first of two articles is how to handle a triggered person on social media; the second to face-to-face situations. Like anything […]

We all have personal crises. Those crises where our chest tightens, our brain fogs and our world seems like it’s swirling down the plughole. At the time, it feels like we are the only person in crisis while the lives of everyone around us are on an even keel. It’s not whether we have crises […]