Author: fitness-expert
Last night I set out for Rusholme for a drink and a curry with a mate. When we met at the pub we were turned away. The venue was shutting down in anticipation that the riots were moving in our direction. I felt profoundly disturbed. We found another pub that was remaining open. There were very few customers, but I did talk to one man who had been caught in the city centre violence unable to escape for three hours. I had heard enough. I walked home to the scene of emergency vehicles roaming the streets, lights flashing, and busloads…
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is an anxiety disorder effecting about 2% of men. It’s characteristics are repeated and uncontrollable ‘obsessions’, which are intrusive thoughts that are not consistent with the man’s values, and ‘compulsions’, which are behaviours or thinking patterns that people use to neutralise the impact of the compulsive thought. Examples of Obsessions include: Thoughts that things are unclean or contaminated. Thoughts of having sex with your mother or other inappropriate people. Imagining your children being hurt by a stranger. Thinking ‘gay thoughts’ even though you are straight. Thinking you have knocked someone down in the car. Examples of…
I’ve watched with concern over the past year as a new phrase has emerged in the cultural zeitgeist … the “feckless father”. As a term, of course, it’s surely one of abuse. What man would welcome being described as “feckless”? But I detect a cultural double standard in the way it is used. Of course we should all be concerned about children raised without a father. Such children are more likely to fail at school, engage in criminality, be the victims of sexual abuse, and even join gangs. There is a time bomb of fatherless children that is not only…
When I was in my 20s I fell seriously ill. Suddenly and unexpectedly I was rendered bedbound for months and unable to work for considerably longer. My world had stopped turning up on its axis, and I was fearful I would lose my job and my home. One of the ways I coped with these events was to play the National Lottery. I had a “magic number bowl”, from which I chose the numbers each week, and an elaborate list of spending plans should I win. I even traded with God to give a proportion of my winnings to charity…
You might have thought that being a psychotherapist I would have lots to say about being happy. This isn’t strictly true though. Therapists, if I were to be precise, know a lot about unhappiness. Theories abound explaining our depressions, anxieties, and problems in living. We don’t have a particularly good grasp of happiness, which is kind of strange since this is what most of our clients are searching for. Martin Seligman is an unusual psychologist in that he has devoted his career to researching happiness. His book, ‘Authentic Happiness’, promises to reveal what makes a person happy and is packed…
As we come to the end of another year, I was reflecting on which man has had the most significant impact on society. I think history will show it will be Julian Assange, the slightly eccentric Australian journalist and founder of the web site Wikileaks. He has, of course, hit the world’s headlines recently for publishing secret communications from the US State department and alleging a politically motivated extradition to Sweden on sex offence charges. Assange’s impact will not be remembered by the legal battle he is currently fighting but by his philosophy of political activism that he espouses. Of…
Men have produced some of the most spiritually transcendent philosophies the world has ever seen. Christ, Buddha and Mohammed all lived at the dawn of history yet still remain revered by many. These were not just great thinkers, but great human beings. But not all men are like this. The male gender has also produced some of the worst rogues on record. Two of them, in the shape of Hitler and Stalin, in the 20th century alone. One theory is that whilst women converge to the mean on the spread of the population, men tend to have a broader spread…
I remember being in the office of my therapist when I was in my late twenties. I was agitated and distressed by the advancement of age and shouted “I’m being dragged kicking and screaming into middle age … and I don’t like it!” I can laugh about it now. After all, I would give a lot to look as good as I did then. I’m a bit more relaxed about the aging process these days. I have, after all, had a lot more time to get used to it. For a while though, it did stress me out. I was…
I can just about remember the start of the punk era. I was at junior school and I can recall the moral outrage these young men and women created by their wearing of mohikan hair styles, ripped jeans and pierced noses. It seemed the moral fabric of society was being shaken to its core. The values of a shared decency of dress were being challenged, and the backlash was both intense, and in hindsight, reactionary. With the passage of time, the innovations of punk are now the common currency of the fashion zeitgeist. We can pierce our bodies, shave our…
We can all feel low and poorly motivated from time to time. But for as many as 30% during our lives, our low mood and lack of motivation just won’t shift. Often, despite our best efforts, and the efforts of those who care for us, our low moods exhaust our ability to cope. We have become depressed. The question for mental health practitioners is how best to help someone who has become depressed? One treatment strategy, the medical approach, involves prescribing an antidepressant. These work on the neurotransmitters in the brain cells to improve our mood. The other strategy is…