EMDR: There goes My Monster

My Monster. Yesterday.

My subconscious is definitely smarter than I am. Unfettered by me, it would probably have passed loads more exams than I did, gone to uni, been a proper person, made good contacts and given itself the best possible run at a career in writing.

My subconscious had it easy though. It was able to see life clearly, assess it and identify a sensible, well lit path for it to follow to the required destination. Sign posted and everything.

I emerged onto that same path in the midst of a fistfight with a foe I wouldn’t get a good look at until I was in my early thirties. Every step I took, every decision I made was taunted by this relentless, petty creature, who liked to lounge on my back and critique my progress, desperate for a misstep so it could remind me how the whole thing was my own fault because I was crap.

Reader? Anxiety. Anxiety? Reader.

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Last night, she said, oh baby I feel so down.

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My tablets aren’t working.

A bold, self-conscious step into the fray that followed Johann Hari’s contention that the drugs don’t work? Or indeed the same into reports of research showing that they do?

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#MeToo: Trigger Warnings & Truths

Do I have a responsibility not to self-harm because of the impact it will have on those around me?

Not exactly a party starter, is it? But it’s because this is a deeply uncomfortable question with significant and numerous ramifications that we don’t engage with it – we try not to think about it at all – despite the vital insights it might offer.

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