Author: Story Teller
You’re lying on the floor, wracked with sobs, curled up because you can’t take the pain anymore. Pain boils through your body and you can’t understand. You can’t understand what you did to deserve this. It feels like cruel and unusual punishment. You don’t know why this is happening to you. You plead for relief. Anything to make the pain go away. You think the pain is a curse. Yet pain is a necessary part of life. Without pain, there would be no pleasure. You may not want pain in your life, but you need it. Pain is a contrast Without pain, you…
In this series of posts, I’m putting two ideas together—the idea that smart, creative, sensitive individuals are confronted by special challenges and the idea that journaling is a valuable self-help tool—and turning them into a set of journaling prompts designed to lead you on a personal journey of discovery. I hope that you enjoy these prompts. Here are five more challenges, and four journal prompts to go with each challenge. Engaging with any one of them may well serve you. I hope you find these valuable! And I hope you’ll take a look at Why Smart People Hurt and at my latest…
As adults, it’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day grind and let personal issues slide by the wayside. As a result, we neglect things like deep personal hygiene, that newer car we need, or that vacation we’ve been putting off, despite the hit to our mental health. That doesn’t mean that all is lost, however. You can still commit to yourself; an online community provides excellent ways to start. 1. Great Skincare One person said the best they’ve felt was when they spent money on a dermatologist. Suffering from adult acne can be difficult, if not downright depressing.…
You’re sitting across from someone you care deeply about, and there it is a suffocating feeling that you can’t quite shake off. You want to stand up for yourself, to set boundaries — but you can’t. Instead, you linger a bit too long. According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, lingering is to be slow in parting or in quitting something. My entire life has been more about lingering than leaving. A feeling wrapped up in an invisible force that bound me to a cycle of constant approval and fear of abandonment. What in the world was happening? Three words: the codependency trap.…
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — From 2006 through 2014, more than 81 million painkiller pills were shipped to this city and surrounding rural Cabell County. The arrival of prescription opioids onto seemingly every block of Huntington, a city of about 46,000 people, augured the first wave of an overdose crisis. Heroin followed, then fentanyl. Residents remember Aug. 15, 2016, as the darkest day because on that afternoon and evening, 28 people overdosed in the city. But Huntington had shouldered collective trauma before. On Nov. 14, 1970, Southern Airways Flight 932 crashed into a hillside just outside Huntington, killing all 75 on board. The dead…
It’s time to de-feet the trend of going shoeless. Though the barefoot lifestyle is not new – as evidenced by various types of barefoot or minimalist shoes and other products – the movement is resurfacing thanks to TikTok. Users on the popular social media app are ditching their shoes in public, with some even finding discreet ways to get around the rules in their favorite places by chopping off the soles on their shoes. They boast that walking barefoot is more natural, and thus more beneficial to the feet. Many fellow TikTok users insist that these barefoot videos are simply…
Four years of illness. More than 57,000 confirmed deaths in Canada. Three and a half million people with long-COVID. Recurrent waves causing destabilization of our health-care system from increased demand and a depleted health-care workforce due to burnout, acute and chronic COVID illness. It’s time for Canadians to organize and advocate for patients, for ourselves and for our kids. It’s time for better policy from our health authorities and politicians. It’s time for the Canadian Covid Society. To this point, outside of government-funded vaccine awareness initiatives, COVID advocacy has been left to small, grassroots, self-organized, volunteer-run groups – trying to fill informational gaps where…
In the hustle and bustle of everyday life, it’s easy to forget to prioritize our well-being. Caught up in the demands of work, family, and other commitments, self-care often takes a backseat. However, neglecting our well-being can have detrimental effects on both our physical and mental health. In this blog post, we’ll explore some vital steps you can take to enhance your well-being and live a happier, healthier life. Protein powders Protein powders have become increasingly popular for their convenience and effectiveness in supporting health and fitness goals. Athletes, bodybuilders, and individuals seeking to increase their protein intake often use…
One of the things that we do in the course is we have simulated patients and faculty observing a student deliver bad news. We have two scenarios — one is a man, one is a woman. It’s basically that the cancer has come back and the student has to figure out a way to deliver the news to this person in 20 minutes or so. Active listening is not just listening, but probing and trying to understand what their emotional response to this news is, as best as one can. Oftentimes, medical students will resort to medical language. “Metastases,” for…
Does exercising regularly give you carte blanche to eat whatever you want? The short answer: no. The nutrients put in your body — good and bad — can affect your health and your risk for certain types of diseases regardless of how much you exercise, says Tidelands Health family medicine physician Dr. Elizabeth Dixon, who offers care at Tidelands Health Family Medicine at Murrells Inlet. “Diet is in some ways more important than exercise in avoiding metabolic diseases,” Dr. Dixon says. One study found that nearly half of deaths in the U.S. caused by common diseases such as heart disease, stroke and Type…