Bad habits
Whispers of Truth
Once upon a time in a small village nestled amidst rolling hills, there lived a young woman named Amelia. With a heart burdened by guilt and secrets, she carried a heavy weight that seemed to grow with each passing day. Amelia had made choices she deeply regretted, and the weight of her actions threatened to consume her.
Onala OladipupoPublished 10 months ago in ConfessionsCultivating Self-Compassion:
In the quiet solitude of her room, Sarah battled with the relentless voices of self-doubt that echoed through her mind. They whispered cruel words, mocking her dreams and undermining her worth. It seemed that no matter how hard she tried, she could never measure up to the expectations she had set for herself.
Sakyi EnochPublished 10 months ago in ConfessionsConfessions
Introduction: In a world filled with unexpected twists and turns, some stories transcend the boundaries of ordinary day to day life.Today, we delve into a tale that unfolded when I was in high school, within the confines of a classroom, where a forbidden encounter took place—an electrifying, stolen kiss that sent ripples through a sea of unsuspecting students. Prepare to be captivated by a story that will leave you both intrigued and longing for more.
Patricia onyekaPublished 10 months ago in ConfessionsMy Year of Grief and Cancelation.
I am standing in this room wondering what comes now. I know I have to help her but I just don’t know how. All the times I’ve been told about the way her illness goes but the truth of it is no one really knows. Every day the act gets more and more absurd. All of the fear that sits inside me screaming to be heard. I know they won’t though not a single word. I was there at her side. When she called When she cried. How could she leave me here alone? Will she stay sober this time, there is no way to be sure but I’m weary to the bone. Whenever she goes “flying” I keep both feet firmly on the ground. Now I need some help and there is no one around. I never had to face life without her at my side. Now I’m walking right beside her as a black hole opens wide. Mine is just a slower death. I’ve been there for every high and every low but it’s the worst it’s ever been. she’s been hurt but I can’t give up now. Cause I have never been alone.
NatPublished 10 months ago in ConfessionsMental horror of physical scars
Hello beautiful souls This story began four years ago when my late teenage years were plagued by the onset of acne. At first, I dismissed the breakouts as a temporary inconvenience, assuming they would fade away with time. However, as the months went by, my acne worsened, transforming into a painful and relentless condition known as cystic acne. This inflammatory type caused deep, pus-filled pimples that seemed to take root beneath my skin. It became apparent that I had to take this issue seriously, but by then, it felt like it was too late.
Ruby sathPublished 10 months ago in ConfessionsReplace your stress by a calm mind
A many times agone , I broke into my own house. I had just driven home, it was around night in the nothingness of Montreal downtime, I had been visiting my friend, Jeff, across city, and the thermometer on the frontal veranda read minus 40 degrees-- and do not bother asking if that is Celsius or Fahrenheit, minus 40 is where the two scales meet-- it was veritably cold. And as I stood on the frontal veranda fumbling in my pockets, I set up I did not have my keys. In fact, I could see them through the window, lying on the dining room table where I had left them. So I snappily ran around and tried all the other doors and windows, and they were locked tight. I allowed about calling a locksmith-- at least I had my cellphone, but at night, it could take a while for a locksmith to show up, and it was cold. I could not go back to my friend Jeff's house for the night because I had an early flight to Europe the coming morning, and I demanded to get my passport and my wallet. So, hopeless and nipping cold wave, I set up a large gemstone and I broke through the basement window, cleared out the shards of glass, I crawled through, I set up a piece of cardboard and taped it up over the opening, figuring that in the morning, on the way to the field, I could call my contractor and ask him to fix it. This was going to be precious, but presumably no more precious than a middle- of- the- night locksmith, so I figured, under the circumstances, I was coming out indeed. Now, I am a neuroscientist by training and I know a little bit about how the brain performs under stress. It releases cortisol that raises your heart rate, it modulates adrenaline situations and it clouds your thinking. So the coming morning, when I woke up on too little sleep, fussing about the hole in the window, and a internal note that I had to call my contractor, and the nipping temperatures, and the meetings I had forthcoming in Europe, and, you know, with all the cortisol in my brain, my thinking was cloudy, but I did not know it was cloudy because my thinking was cloudy. And it was not until I got to the field check- in counter, that I realized I did not have my passport. So I contended home in the snow and ice, 40 twinkles, got my passport, contended back to the field, I made it just in time, but they had given away my seat to someone differently, so I got stuck in the reverse of the aeroplane, coming to the bathrooms, in a seat that wouldn't slope, on an eight- hour flight. Well, I had a lot of time to suppose during those eight hours and no sleep. And I started wondering, are there effects that I can do, systems that I can put into place, that will help bad effects from passing? Or at least if bad effects be, will minimize the liability of it being a total catastrophe. So I started allowing about that, but my studies did not solidify until about a month latterly. I was having regale with my coworker, Danny Kahneman, the Nobel Prize winner, and I kindly embarrassedly told him about having broken my window, and, you know, forgotten my passport, and Danny participated with me that he would been rehearsing commodity called prospective hindsight. It's commodity that he'd gotten from the psychologist Gary Klein, who had written about it a many times before, also called thepre-mortem. Now, you all know what the posthumous is. Whenever there is a disaster, a platoon of experts come by and they try to figure out what went wrong, right? Well, in thepre-mortem, Danny explained, you look ahead and you try to figure out all the effects that could go awry, and also you try to figure out what you can do to help those effects from passing, or to minimize the damage. So what I want to talk to you about moment are some of the effects we can do in the form of apre-mortem. Some of them are egregious, some of them aren't so egregious. I will start with the egregious bones . Around the home, designate a place for effects that are fluently lost. Now, this sounds like common sense, and it is, but there is a lot of wisdom to back this up, grounded on the way our spatial memory workshop. There is a structure in the brain called the hippocampus, that evolved over knockouts of thousands of times, to keep track of the locales of important effects-- where the well is, where fish can be set up, that stage of fruit trees, where the friendly and adversary lines live. The hippocampus is the part of the brain that in London cab motorists becomes enlarged. It's the part of the brain that allows squirrels to find their nuts. And if you are wondering, notoriety actually did the trial where they cut off the olfactory sense of the squirrels, and they could still find their nuts. They were not using smell, they were using the hippocampus, this exquisitely evolved medium in the brain for chancing effects. But it's really good for effects that do not move around much, not so good for effects that move around. So this is why we lose auto keys and reading spectacles and passports. So in the home, designate a spot for your keys-- a hook by the door, perhaps a ornamental coliseum. For your passport, a particular hole. For your reading spectacles, a particulartable.However, your effects will always be there when you look for them, If you designate a spot and you are scrupulous about it. What about trip? Take a cell phone picture of your credit cards, your motorist's license, your passport, correspondence it to yourself so it's in thecloud.However, you can grease relief, If these effects are lost or stolen. Now these are some rather egregious effects. Flash back, when you are under stress, the brain releases cortisol. Cortisol is poisonous, and it causes cloudy thinking. So part of the practice of thepre-mortem is to fete that under stress you are not going to be at your stylish, and you should put systems in place. And there is maybe no more stressful a situation than when you are brazened with a medical decision to make. And at some point, all of us are going to be in that position, where we've to make a veritably important decision about the future of our medical care or that of a loved one, to help them with a decision. And so I want to talk about that. And I am going to talk about a veritably particular medical condition. But this stands as a deputy for all kinds of medical decision- timber, and indeed for fiscal decision- timber, and social decision- timber-- any kind of decision you have to make that would profit from a rational assessment of the data. So suppose you go to your croaker and the croaker says," I just got your lab work back, your cholesterol's a little high." Now, you all know that high cholesterol is associated with an increased threat of cardiovascular complaint, heart attack, stroke. And so you are allowing having high cholesterol is not the stylish thing, and so the croaker says," You know, I'd like to give you a medicine that will help you lower your cholesterol, a statin." And you've presumably heard of statins, you know that they are among the most extensively specified medicines in the world moment, you presumably indeed know people who take them. And so you are allowing," Yeah! Give me the statin." But there is a question you should ask at this point, a statistic you should ask for that most croakers do not like talking about, and pharmaceutical companies like talking about indeed lower. It's for the number demanded to treat. Now, what's this, the NNT? It's the number of people that need to take a medicine or suffer a surgery or any medical procedure before one person is helped. And you are allowing, what kind of crazy statistic is that? The number should be one. My croaker wouldn't define commodity to me if it's not going to help. But actually, medical practice does not work that way. And it's not the croaker 's fault, if it's anybody's fault, it's the fault of scientists like me. We have not figured out the underpinning mechanisms well enough. But GlaxoSmithKline estimates that 90 percent of the medicines work in only 30 to 50 percent of the people. So the number demanded to treat for the most extensively specified statin, what do you suppose it is? How numerous people have to take it before one person is helped? 300. This is according to exploration by exploration interpreters Jerome Groopman and Pamela Hartzband, singly verified byBloomberg.com. I ran through the figures myself. 300 people have to take the medicine for a time before one heart attack, stroke or other adverse event is averted. Now you are presumably allowing," Well, OK, one in 300 chance of lowering my cholesterol. Why not, croaker? Give me the tradition anyway." But you should ask at this point for another statistic, and that is," Tell me about the side goods." Right? So for this particular medicine, the side goods do in five percent of the cases. And they include terrible effects-- enervating muscle and joint pain, gastrointestinal torture-- but now you are allowing," Five percent, not veritably likely it's going to be to me, I will still take the medicine." But stay a nanosecond. Flash back under stress you are not allowing easily. So suppose about how you are going to work through this ahead of time, so you do not have to manufacture the chain of logic on the spot. 300 people take the medicine, right? One person's helped, five percent of those 300 have side goods, that is 15 people. You are 15 times more likely to be harmed by the medicine than you're to be helped by the medicine. Now, I am not saying whether you should take the statin or not. I am just saying you should have this discussion with your croaker . Medical ethics requires it, it's part of the principle of informed concurrence. You have the right to have access to this kind of information to begin the discussion about whether you want to take the pitfalls or not. Now you might be allowing I have pulled this number out of the air for shock value, but in fact it's rather typical, this number demanded to treat. For the most extensively performed surgery on men over the age of 50, junking of the prostate for cancer, the number demanded to treat is 49. That is right, 49 surgeries are done for every one person who is helped. And the side goods in that case do in 50 percent of the cases. They include incompetence, erectile dysfunction, urinary incontinence, rectal tearing, fecal incontinence. And if you are lucky, and you are one of the 50 percent who has these, they'll only last for a time or two. So the idea of thepre-mortem is to suppose ahead of time to the questions that you might be suitable to ask that will push the discussion forward. You do not want to have to manufacture all of this on the spot. And you also want to suppose about effects like quality of life. Because you have a choice hourly, do you I want a shorter life that is pain-free, or a longer life that might have a great deal of pain towards the end? These are effects to talk about and suppose about now, with your family and your loved ones You might change your mind in the heat of the moment, but at least you are rehearsed with this kind of thinking. Flash back, our brain under stress releases cortisol, and one of the effects that happens at that moment is a whole bunch on systems shut down.
Asmae El assriPublished 10 months ago in ConfessionsDo I Have Anxiety?
I'm uncertain of the precise origin of my struggles. A therapist might attribute them to my childhood experiences, and that hypothesis holds some plausibility. Friends, too, would likely agree with that assessment. Here's what I've been grappling with lately—a realization, or perhaps an epiphany, that has struck me deeply: I've never quite been the 'favorite friend.' Yes, there were fleeting moments in 5th, 6th, and 12th grade when I felt a glimmer of belongingness, but overall, I was simply there, blending into the background. Hugs, for some inexplicable reason, have always made me feel disconcerted, prompting me to substitute them with high fives as a means of conveying my friendliness. And when it came to asking questions in class, I would meticulously rehearse them in my mind, only to realize that the class had moved on to an entirely different topic. It often felt like hitting a dead end.
Ada ZubaPublished 10 months ago in ConfessionsWhy Do We Lie?
We humans often lie for a variety of complex reasons. Sometimes we lie in order to protect ourselves or others from potential trouble, to avoid conflict, due to habit that has formed over time, or to perceive some advantage in that moment. Lying rarely benefits relationships in the long run and corrodes trust.
Asmae El assriPublished 10 months ago in Confessionswhy girls think that they are ugly
As a woman, I am tired of the narrow standards of beauty that are imposed on us. The media often portrays the ideal image for black girls as having light skin and long hair, which does not reflect the reality of many of us. Personally, I am brown-skinned, curvy, and have a flat butt. I remember hearing someone describe me in a negative way, focusing on the attributes I didn't have. However, this experience taught me an important lesson - to love myself for who I am and not to let someone else's opinion determine my value. That's why I started my own cosmetic company six years ago, with the aim of changing the way we think about beauty. I was frustrated that society only looked at attractiveness through a single lens, and I wanted to challenge that. When you search for "beauty" today, you'll see a sea of fair-skinned, thin, young women, as if good looks only come in one form. This narrow view of beauty makes us feel like we're not enough, and we start to think that we're lacking in some way. This lack of confidence can hold us back from pursuing our dreams and reaching our full potential. It also affects how we view others - if we don't feel good enough, we may project that insecurity onto our sisters, friends, and cousins. For too long, women have been told that our value is directly linked to our looks, our ability to get married, and our ability to have children. Even today, we still see this idea perpetuated in every industry - from Serena Williams dominating on the tennis court to Hillary Clinton running for President. We also see it in the way that little girls are discriminated against for their hairstyles. For example, a little girl in Louisiana wasn't allowed to attend school because of her braided hairstyle, which is a long-standing part of African and African-American beauty culture. This kind of discrimination is unacceptable - our hairstyle doesn't prevent us from learning or succeeding in any way. So, what is attractiveness? Shouldn't it be subjective? While it's true that what we find attractive is influenced by our environment, there is a dangerous trend towards a global standard of beauty that is rooted in Western ideals. This standard leaves many women feeling invalidated, unwanted, or too old to be beautiful. It also affects men - many are conditioned to find women who look like their mothers attractive, perpetuating a narrow view of beauty. It's time to challenge these narrow standards and embrace diversity in all its forms. At my cosmetic company, we celebrate diversity and aim to create products that work for everyone, regardless of skin tone or body type. We want to redefine what beauty means and empower women to love themselves for who they are. By doing so, we can create a world where everyone feels valued and appreciated, regardless of how they look.
Asmae El assriPublished 10 months ago in ConfessionsThe Heartache of Empty
Hunger is a global crisis that affects millions of people, yet its emotional impact often goes unnoticed. Beyond the physical pain and suffering, hunger takes a tremendous toll on individuals, families, and communities, leaving lasting emotional scars. This article delves into the depths of this emotional aspect, highlighting the human stories behind the statistics and shedding light on the heartache of empty stomachs.
solomon ChristianPublished 10 months ago in ConfessionsMental Fitness
When we think about fitness, we often focus on physical exercise, strength training, and cardiovascular health. But there is a crucial aspect of our well-being that is often overlooked: our mental fitness. The mind-body connection plays a vital role in our overall health, and by training this connection, we can achieve optimal well-being and unlock our full potential.
Joan gobanaPublished 10 months ago in ConfessionsThe Courage to Pursue Your Passions
Introduction: Life is a beautiful journey filled with endless possibilities and opportunities. At the heart of this journey lies the pursuit of our passions, those activities and interests that bring us joy, fulfillment, and a sense of purpose. In this article, we will explore the importance of embracing our passions, share real-life examples of individuals who have fearlessly pursued their dreams, and discuss how we can cultivate the courage to follow our own unique paths, unlocking our true potential along the way.
Christina NeedhamPublished 10 months ago in Confessions