How to Be a Human - front cover

 


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Ears

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I started working on Project Change My Brain back in January.  As most of my problems are to do with the way I think with the left, verbal side of my brain – worrying for decade over possible meanings of things people have said – I decided to spend more time on non-verbal relaxation.  I would try to learn yoga.  I would spend more time colouring, and listening to instrumental music. Finding a yoga class turned out to be harder than I had expected, as there is no longer one in the local Village Hall, and the one I saw advertised in a studio in Shepton Mallet that I pass on my way to work wasn’t currently running.   I did enjoy colouring designs to make greetings cards: a big, bear-like dog for a greetings card for a friend, a tree-stump for a condolence card, a semi-abstract Egyptian-looking design of two facing figures for my wedding anniversary. Listening to music had seemed straightforwardly relaxing.   I don’t take recreational drugs, but I love the hallu...
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The Great Dragon Audition

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For several years now, I have wondered about getting a Nativity scene.  There are all sorts of versions around, from a range of sizes and styles available in cathedral gift shops to a tiny Mexican folk art version that I once saw in a gift shop.  Books on handicrafts offer patterns to make your very own woollen ‘Knitivity’. When I’ve raised the subject with PDB11 , his answer has always been: ‘What I’d really like to have is a dragon Nativity.’   It’s not that he thinks that Jesus was a dragon, even in a fantasy universe , but just that, as a Christian who likes fantasy fiction involving dragons, he would like to combine the two ideas. A web search for ‘dragon Nativity’ brought up three main results.   Firstly, there are a number   of essays  arguing that you should include a dragon in Nativity scenes, in reference to the allegorical poem in Revelation 15 picturing Satan as a dragon attempting to eat Jesus. I did once have a go at making a Christmas ...
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Incurable?

Recently, I started re-reading from the beginning a fanfiction series about therapy that I had been following for several years.   Even if, as I described in a previous post , a recent chapter had left me worrying that depression is genetic and inevitable, the story overall is about recovery.   The author takes a tragic hero who has a short, lonely and misunderstood life in canon, and gives him a chance to survive, get some much-needed help, and find happiness and love.   I had found the story deeply inspiring. However, re-reading it, I noticed that in an early chapter , when the hero goes to his first therapy session, his therapist warns him that most mental illness can be treated but not exactly cured, and so treatment focuses on learning to function with it and minimise the symptoms. It struck me that if I were the hero, I would think at that point, ‘I’ve already “functioned” well enough to do my job for the past 17 years and help defeat an evil wizard, and I’ve h...
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