In today’s post, I will focus on emotions. “Emotions,” as Damasio notes in Part 1 “indicate actions,” and then later describes them as “concerts of actions.”
The language of psychology can be confusing. But the use of precise language is critically important to the process of counselling, because we cannot attend to the parts of the world that we cannot name.
Adult adhd is not a thing. It is as I described in a my previous post: a corrupt name that follows a corrupt concept.
This one is going to be a bit of a screed. To all the good and empathetic doctors out there... you can sit this one out.
The stories of Fidgety Phillip and Johnny head-in-air were written by Heinrich Hoffman in the mid-19th century. Hoffman was a Physician and Psychiatrist professionally but is best remembered for his illustrated children's stories called Struwwelpeter.
I'm don't feel great about the language we currently use to describe and denote those of us who have a neurological difference.
Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD) is still not widely known and is even more poorly understood but, in my clinical experience, globally experienced by those of us who have adhd.
I love this one, because in two short sentences, the author conveys a sense of some of the ways—there are many more—in which those of us with adhd experience sensory/perceptual overwhelm that might be surprising to neurotypical readers.
Today is day 1 of There Counselling. Welcome all.
As I have worked with clients over these past five years, it has become clear to me that the foundational determinant of well-being is our relation to the (our) future.
Which is heavier, wearing a 25kg backpack and having to walk around with it all day every day or not knowing if you and the people in your life are going to be safe—in whatever way you want to conceptualize "safe"—on a day-to-day basis?
What this suggests is that when there are not sufficient rules and laws and conventions, one's imagination is completely ungoverned. And an ungoverned—"fantastic" in Kierkegaard's words—mind ultimately leads one away from oneself... towards the sickness unto death that is despair.
