Temple Cloud

As I described in a previous post , after reading a fanfiction chapter in which someone seemed to draw comparison between depression and being transgender, I worried that this implied that depression is hardwired and unchangeable.  After all, being transgender, like being gay – and like being autistic, as I am – is something that people are born with.   Children aren’t likely to show signs of autism until they’re a year old, and probably won’t realise that they are transgender until they are old enough to notice that there is a difference between boys and girls, or won’t realise they’re gay until they’re old enough to feel sexual attraction, but the neural wiring was there from before birth, and it isn’t going to go away.   Attempts to ‘correct’ any of these by training young children to behave in a socially acceptable way do nothing but hurt the child and teach them that they are unacceptable. So, is depression something similar?   Some people consider being sui...

I love fanfiction. I’m not sure how much I need to clarify this.   One person to whom I mentioned my hobby of writing fanfiction asked in puzzlement what the term meant, and whether it was short for fantasy fiction.   I explained that no, it just meant not-for-profit stories written by fans of any book, film, TV series, comic etc, imagining other episodes in the lives of the characters.   However, I must admit that most of the fanfics I have written have been based on science fiction or fantasy series. Fanfiction offers almost limitless possibilities for exploring the lives of characters.    I love humour, exploration of the interactions between characters, missing scenes of conversations the characters might have had when the original author wasn’t looking, and crossovers where characters from two different stories meet.   But in particular, I enjoy stories about characters recovering from emotional or psychological trauma.   There often aren’t e...

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...