There is a particular type of fatigue that lacks a clear cause. Not the exhaustion of a challenging week that ends on Saturday morning. Not the fatigue from sickness that goes away as you get better. It’s more akin to a low-pitched hum of fatigue that has persisted for so long that you’ve forgotten about it, similar to how you lose awareness of traffic noise after a year of living close to a motorway. The body adjusts. It is labeled as normal by the mind. And underneath the performance of doing well, the stress continues to build up silently. Clinicians…
Author: Jack Ward
The term “young for her age” conjures images of Helen Edwards. At seventy-four, she was managing the family transport company, operating an animal feed business, walking her dog through the hills close to Penrhyn-coch, and swimming in the sea along the Welsh coast. According to her daughter Jane Richards, she was “really lively and fit.” Then she began to feel strange on a Tuesday in early September of last year. exhausted. Achy. A low temperature. The kind of thing that most people recover from with rest and paracetamol within a few days. No one became alarmed. Why would they do…
Some couples begin to have the conversations they have been discreetly avoiding for months at some point, usually between the engagement party and the venue deposit. Cash. Kids. Christmas is given to whose family? What happens if one of you wants to relocate, loses a job, or just doesn’t feel like the person the other one married? These are not romantic discussions. They are essential ones. Additionally, more and more couples are having them without waiting for a crisis. Instead, they are scheduling a therapist. Premarital counseling has lost much of its institutional framing in recent years. Previously, it was…
Some people find a certain type of stillness to be nearly intolerable. It’s the stillness of waiting rather than the stillness of peace. It’s a good relationship. For the first time in years, there isn’t a financial crisis. The health test results were negative. However, there is a low hum of dread somewhere in the chest, just beneath the typical rhythm of a Tuesday afternoon. There’s going to be something. There must be an impending event. It always does. As a philosophy, this is not pessimism. It’s more than that; it’s a nervous system that has been trained over an…
A woman sits on the edge of her new bed in her new city and feels, for some reason, like crying in the middle of what should have been a very good week—the job offer accepted, the apartment finally secured, the long-distance relationship closing its gap. Not because there’s a problem. Because there is something seriously wrong that cannot be explained. She is aware of the situation’s logic. She made the correct decisions. The results are precisely what she had anticipated. However, the sensation in her chest is unrelated to any of that. This is one of the most confusing…
The Effects of Living Without Emotional Language on Emotions Around the world, therapy offices engage in a specific type of conversation that goes something like this. “How did that make you feel?” queries the therapist. After a brief period of silence, the intelligent, articulate, and frequently successful professional person seated across from them says, “I don’t know.” This isn’t meant to be a diversion. Not by avoiding it. They just have no idea. There is a sense that something is going on inside, but it has no name, no form, and no way out. It resides in the chest like…
Every workplace has a certain type of professional—the person who shows up early, completes all tasks assigned to them, never escalates a complaint, and somehow never advances. They are warmly described by coworkers. Managers are totally dependent on them. And every year, the accolades, promotions, and intriguing tasks go to someone else. Someone with more volume. Someone who occasionally pushes back, expresses opinions, and occasionally prolongs the meeting. The laid-back worker observes this from a safe distance and questions what they are doing incorrectly with a bewilderment that is subtly draining. They are not acting improperly. That’s practically the whole…
High-functioning people are often caught off guard by a specific moment. It occurs during retirement celebrations, the week following a job termination, or when the final child departs for college, and the house becomes quiet in a way that feels more like exposure than tranquility. The job title, parenthood, and being-needed roles that kept everything in order vanish. And what’s left is a self standing in its own living room feeling strangely naked, one that hasn’t been examined in years or even decades. This is the anxiety that comes from not having a part to play. Not the fear of…