Hello Subscribers!
Are you feeling overwhelmed by the long articles, or just don't have the bandwidth? Have no fear; TL;DR for MARCH is here! This new digest summarizes the vital bits from the month's "How to Live" newsletter so you don't miss a thing.
đ„łÂ We now have a COMMENTS SECTION! đÂ
I canât wait to hear your thoughts and engage with you!
Iâve also launched ONE REC A WEEK, which youâll read about down at the bottom.
This article from March 1st, 2023, was about THE ONE WEBSITE THAT NEVER FAILS ME
Iâve been sick for five months and have started to feel fairly burnt out and depressed about feeling relentlessly unwell.
Itâs given me some time to think about what sort of things make me feel better, and why.
It occurred to me that I feel most alive when newer concepts bang into older ones, sparking something original and uniquely shaped.
Introducing new thoughts and ideas gives me mental energy, which lifts me from most numb, stuck, and existentially bored (often long) moments. This is vital information for me to know about myself. Even if I can't get out of bed, I can (almost) always read.
ENTER
The one website that never fails me.
Atlas Obscura is overflowing with stories no one else has heard and will make you the most interesting person at parties, drawing a veritable harem of riveted and gap-jawed listeners around you.
For instance, did you know that before there was the Rorschach Test, there was Klecksography?
Or that Spiritualism was a religious movement kick-started by two sisters, 11 and 14-year-old Kate and Margaret Fox, who, despite faking their communion with the dead, launched a movement that not only gained momentum but thrived?
I link to a ton of really interesting stories. If you want to see what they areâŠ
This March 8th Piece Was About A Therapeutic Modality Called Brainspotting.
In 1993, David Grand was a young psychologist in training, learning EMDR from Francine Shapiro.
He found the method exciting and effective. When he learned Somatic Experiencing Therapy in 1999, he decided to integrate psychoanalysis, somatic experiencing, and EMDR, using eye movements of varying speeds and directions, healing sounds, and different tactile innovations. He called this Natural Flow EMDR.
When Dr. Grand was conducting Natural Flow EMDR on a young professional skater who was struggling to land a triple axel, he asked her to visualize the jump in slow motion and to freeze the moment she was going off balance. As she followed Dr. Grandâs bilateral finger movements, he noticed that when his fingers were at the midline of her nose and eyes, her eyes wobbled and locked in place. She stayed in that position for ten minutes, and Dr. Grand held his fingers in place.
In those ten minutes, his young patient reported a flood of images of past childhood traumas, illnesses, deep wells of frozen grief, and family fights. As she reported what she was seeing, she was processing traumas Dr. Grand thought were resolved, but that seemed to have resurfaced and then processed on a deeper level.
When she was done, they were both astonished by what had happened, but neither mentioned it. The next day, his client called from the rink to excitedly inform Dr. Grand that sheâd landed the triple axel with no problems. And sheâd done it again and again and again.
Brainspotting was born.
Grand wrote a book about this controversial and groundbreaking therapy called BRAINSPOTTING: The Revolutionary New Therapy for Rapid and Effective Change
The MARCH 13th piece was a guest post by Tamar Chansky about the 7 Misbeliefs about what it means to be an adult.
What does it really mean to be an adult?
Amanda posed this question to me recently, and as youâll see, I was ready with some answersâfrom my patients to my own life, this question has been on my mind.
We are not going to feel OK a lot of the time. This reality flies in the face of a long-held myth of adulthoodâthat being an adult means generally having your sh!t together at all times.
That is a myth. The mother of all myths about adulthood.
As it turns out, one of the challenges of the human condition that is more easily fixable than others is removing the self-judgment we feel for reacting âwrong.â Thatâs a layer of the burdens we are already feeling that we can right now just lift off.
âI shouldnât be feeling this way, Iâm an adult!!!â
Judgment is painful and itâs a distraction from solving whatever lies beneath that judge-y surface.
So letâs get a few things straight:
1. Itâs OK to feel NOT like an adult, whatever that means (weâll explore below).
2. Being an adult is a dynamic thingâa fluid experienceânot a continuous line, or a logical vector of maturity. I am an inveterate determined child at heart and âmature on demand, onlyâ as my adult children know.
3. Adulthood is a construct. In fancy words: adulthood is an assigned meaning, a narrative, rules, beliefs, etc.
Adulthood is made up.Â
We can dismantle the unhelpful parts in a future post, and decide on some beneficial ways to define adulthood⊠for now, at least, letâs just say that we donât have to feel like an adult to be one.
So, with that in mind, here are a few myths about what it means to be an adult.
She goes on to debunk some long-held beliefs we have about who we should be and how we judge ourselves based on those false beliefs.
You are human, unfinished, a being in process, and millions of people need to remember the same thing at just about this very moment on this spinning top called earth.
The article from March 22nd, 2023 was a love letter to you, dear reader, and one non-reader, my dog, Busy.
I launched How to Live with the intention that the insights and learnings Iâve gained from a lifetime of grappling with a mental health issue would help othersâfriends and strangers alike.
This is why I wrote my memoir Little Panic. I want to offer hope for those suffering as I have, who live with mental anguish, who feel misunderstood, or invisible, broken, defective like theyâre not enough, and a million other things, the solace that they are not alone and provide some practical tools.
The world silences people in emotional pain, and without hearing the pain that others experience, people feel alone and ashamed of their feelings.
I am someone who believes that it is our responsibility as human beings to share with one another our experience of being human so that we donât feel like weâre broken, defective, or alone.
What I did not anticipate in writing my book and this newsletter was that readers would do the same thing for me.
I did not expect that you would write to me and share your stories, your vulnerabilities, and your pain.
You have offered me solace and assured me that I, too, am not alone.
I want to thank you for this.
Then I thank my insanely human-like dog, Busy, and share a ton of cute dog pictures.
The March 29th piece was about the controversial physician GABOR MATE on WHY HE BELIEVES ADDICTION IS NOT A DISEASE
Dr. Gabor Maté is a unique medical professional who has taken his first-hand experience with childhood trauma and allowed it to inform his work.
Born in 1944 in Budapest, MatĂ© was five months old when his maternal grandparents were murdered in Auschwitz. During the war, Nazis captured his father and put him into a labor camp; MatĂ©âs aunt disappeared.
When Gabor was a year old, his mother was desperate to save her babyâs life and handed him over to a stranger. He didnât see his mother for over five weeks. In infant time, thatâs like 37 years. When they were finally reunited, little Gabor avoided looking at his mother for days (in attachment theory, weâd say that he was anxiously attached).
To this day, this early trauma continues to inform his life and interactions.
Maté believes that the first five years of life, and even the environment in the womb, dictate the likelihood of addiction. Addiction is not the problem itself, but the underlying pain.
Craving, pleasure and relief in the short term, negative consequences in the long-term, and the inability or refusal to desist, thatâs what addiction is.â
In his book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts MatĂ© argues that addictionâa complex issue that requires a multifaceted approach to treatmentâis not a choice or a moral failing, but rather a response to trauma and emotional pain.
The piece details Mateâs beliefs, some core practices, and I offer a meditation I love.
@AfterSkool on YouTube
I end the piece with this:Â Were we to allow others to grieve and mourn, to express their needs and desires, and to meet them with acceptance and connection, no matter how awkward or uncomfortable we may feel, then perhaps we can recognize that what an addict needs is not something punitive and carceral, but support and a sense of community, family, and home.
Once a week (unless I forget) I resurrect something from the past which interests me. These are on-site only. I donât send them out. You have to come visit them.
The series is calledâŠ
DISPATCHES FROM THE PAST.
On March 13th I Wrote About Amelia Earhartâs Views on Marriage and Her Call to the New York Times to Stop Using Her Married Name.
The idea of marriage made Amelia Earhart nervous; she didnât want to be locked down by anyone, nor did she want to be tied to just one person.
And yet, George Putnam loved her, and she loved him and after denying his many proposals, she finally said yes.
Her anxiety flared at the mere thought of it. She was, rightfully so, terrified it would interfere with her one true loveâflying, and so, she wrote up her fears and thoughts, and in lieu of a pre-nuptial agreement, Amelia Earhart handed this letter to George Palmer Putnam on their wedding day.
If that werenât enough irritation and stress, the New York Times wouldnât stop printing her married name when writing about her.
She wrote to them, too
On MARCH 30th the Dispatch Was About a Little Red Self-Help Pamphlet Published in 1926 called, It Works!
In 1926, Roy Herbert Jarrett, a 52-year-old printer and typewriter salesman at the American Multigraph Sales Company in Chicago wrote a small 28-page self-help pamphlet on harnessing your inner power to live the life you want.
Before finding a publisher, he sent the small book to his friend Jewell F Stevens, who owned a local ad agency specializing in religious items and books, and asked for feedback.
Jewell read the book and sent back a two-word note: âIt Works.â
If you are in earnest about changing your present condition, here is a concise, definite, resultful plan, with rules, explanations and suggestions.
In this little red book, RHJ explains how our objective and subjective minds are in constant conflict which keeps our wishes remaining as wishes. He claimed to know how to harness the power of this omnipresent energy inside of each one of us so that we can all get the things we truly want. And this book would teach us all how.
Yes, this is The Secret before the secret was The SECRET.
Click the image to buy the book
To get what you want is no more mysterious or uncertan than the radio waves all around you.
The book has sold over 1.5 million copies and has never gone out of print.
I launched another thing tooâONE REC A WEEK.
If something moves me, enhances my life, or makes me see old ideas in new ways, I will recommend it.
The first ONE REC A WEEK LAUNCHED ON MARCH 29th.
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