Temple Cloud

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...

This year, I badly need to get a grip on my mental health.  But then, I have been telling myself that for most of the past ten years – or perhaps nearer twenty. I am not alone.   According to the World Health Organisation, nearly a billion people worldwide live with a mental illness.   The commonest is depression, affecting around 300 million people. However, I suspect that most people in poorer or war-torn countries aren’t worrying about their mental health itself, so much as the specific things they are depressed or anxious about, such as ‘My entire family were killed when the country next door bombed our town,’ or, ‘How can I feed my family when all our crops are dying of thirst?’ I am hugely privileged compared with many people.   I am happily married to PDB11 , a wonderful man who, for reasons I don’t understand, thinks I am a wonderful person too.   We live in Somerset, one of the most beautiful parts of the world that I know.   I have mostly go...