My head feels like a ball of raw meat, aching from a beating, oozing blood from my ears. You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but my brain feels like an open wound. Hyperacusis can be…unpleasant. I haven’t had a high sensory pain day like this for months. There is no convenient day to…
When I first started grappling with hyperacusis, a specialist explained that I was showing signs of what doctors call “loudness hyperacusis” and “pain hyperacusis.” He also warned me that patients often progress to experience more forms of hyperacusis, including what they call “annoyance hyperacusis” and “fear hyperacusis.” Understanding the differences, he urged, could help me…
Today it took me a good hour to make a snack. I didn’t get distracted with texting friends, or pause mid-prep to dance to music. A few years back, that would be the only reason a 20 minute activity would have tripled in duration. But today the work was silent, methodical, deliberate. No attempt to…
Before the “almost category 5” hurricane Ian made a direct hit on my home town, I was learning a lot about how great thinkers have handled suffering and trouble. In my reading, coaching conversations, and coffee walks with friends in the park I had been chewing through the more existential side of suffering. If you’re the scholarly…
![After the Storm [Hurricane Ian 2022]](https://i0.wp.com/wildandbrave.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/After-the-Storm-scaled.jpg?fit=768%2C576&ssl=1)
It’s been intimidating trying to capture the experiences of the storm we just weathered here in southwest Florida. The first hurricane I remember was Hurricane Andrew. My family lived in Fort Myers at the time, and our family businesses were on Sanibel Island. For Hurricane Andrew we closed up our little mom-and-pop style motels on…
Today I’m laid back in a lazy boy, sharing needles with half a dozen other humans at my local community acupuncture clinic. Each of us in our butt palaces, drawn up around a circle, with a doctor of Chinese medicine floating counter clockwise to put needles into us. I will look like a porcupine in…