When Clive Staples Lewis (author of The Chronicles of Narnia, etc) was a boy and was sent away to a public boarding school, he was miserable because he was acutely shy. Eventually realizing that Clive was too shy for such a place, his father took him out and sent him to live in the country … Continue reading Rescuing Shyness|C. S. Lewis
Shyness |Accept yourself, but don’t expect them to accept you
My book The Shyness Guide basically does three things: It presents the evidence that shyness is natural It tries to convince you to accept yourself as a shy person It shows how you can function in the social world in a shy way, rather than in the outgoing way that is constantly urged on you. … Continue reading Shyness |Accept yourself, but don’t expect them to accept you
Paranormal World|Dreams entering Reality
Few people talk about this - the strange interaction that sometimes occurs between a dream and the real world. To show you what I mean, I'll give you a simple example of my own. A few years ago I had a series of dreams, night after night for about a week, in which I dreamt … Continue reading Paranormal World|Dreams entering Reality
Shyness| Learning to live in the Delusion
In my my novel The Birdcatcher, I introduced the idea of the modern social world as a great delusion. The point I was trying to make is that the world you experience in school, workplaces, group relationships, etc, is not simply something that doesn't match up with the wary sensitivity you acquired from a million … Continue reading Shyness| Learning to live in the Delusion
Paranormal World |Children who talk of past lives |Bishen Chand Kapoor
When psychiatrist Ian Stevenson first began investigating children who speak of past lives in India, a magistrate contacted him and suggested that Stevenson come to his jurisdiction, where the murder rate was unusually high. Stevenson did, and found many cases there. For some reason, murder and/or premature death are often associated with these strange children. … Continue reading Paranormal World |Children who talk of past lives |Bishen Chand Kapoor
Autism|Is Asperger’s gone?
I've been asking myself this question since the American Psychiatric Association (APA) published the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth edition) in 2013, which dropped the Asperger's diagnosis. But it took me a while to get my hands on a copy of the DSM-5. This week I examined the section on the … Continue reading Autism|Is Asperger’s gone?
Why did I write The Shyness Guide?
When there are more than 600 books about shyness for sale on Amazon, you might wonder why I wrote another one. How could there be anything left to say? Well, because shyness is almost never understood the way I understand it. My central idea is that shyness is natural in most shy people. It's part … Continue reading Why did I write The Shyness Guide?
Shyness and your Telomeres
Recently I read Elizabeth H. Blackburn's 2017 book The Telomere Effect: a revolutionary approach to living younger, healthier, longer. Throughout it, I couldn't help thinking how relevant this is to shy people. Dr Blackburn is one of the leading researchers into the genetics of the telomere, that device at the ends of your DNA strands … Continue reading Shyness and your Telomeres
Rescuing Nature |Feeding Christmas Birds
On this Christmas morning, after feeding a set of sparrows and starlings who I've been friends with for some years, I had to revisit this photo of a woman I encountered one Christmas morning in a Brooklyn street feeding her pigeons. She also has something in that grocery bag for the grey cat on her … Continue reading Rescuing Nature |Feeding Christmas Birds
