Hello and welcome back to hardcore literature. How are you doing today? I hope you're doing well

and I hope your reading is going well. I hope that I find you in a moment of stillness, a moment of

calm and peace, but I'm aware that it's very possible that I don't.

It's very possible that you are going through a difficult time right now. It's possible that

you are struggling through a crisis, or you have recently, or if if you aren't then you most certainly will in the future

i say that because today's show is called how to read in times of need life isn't perfect we're not happy all of the time and things don't always go the way

we had hoped. And there's a rather pernicious underlying assumption that we don't willingly admit to,

but it's there. And the assumption is that if we're not happy all of the time,

then there's something wrong with us. Even if we are objectively content, even if we're

rather neutral emotionally, we might fall prey to the faulty thinking pattern, and we're going to discuss

faulty thinking patterns in this show, we might fall prey to the erroneous belief that something is

wrong with us. We're not happy, we're not bouncing off the walls ecstatic, and therefore we must be depressed.

And indeed we may be objectively, clinically depressed, we may be blue, we may be anxious.

Just because we're not happy doesn't mean we are those things, but very often we are those things because there is a reason.

Life is full of nasty surprises that push us to breaking point, surprises that challenge us.

Life is full of things that change everything.

And when we find ourselves in those challenging situations, it would be unfair to further burden ourselves with the expectation not to feel completely normal and human emotions.

To take an extreme example, many of us have dealt with grief, and if we haven't dealt with grief,

then we most certainly will at some point in the future. Grief is a very complicated emotion

because it's actually not just one emotion. There are many confusing and sometimes conflicting emotions wrapped up in what we call grief. When someone

close to us passes away, the pain is compounded with confusion. Why do we feel the way we feel? Is my

sadness enough? Or indeed, why do I feel other emotions that aren't quite sadness?

...