Peter Fox Author

27/11/2025

Adverse Childhood Experiences

I experienced 8 of these, some to a severe degree. Result C-PTSD. I am alive due to the kindest of strangers, the generosity of loving friends, somatic psychotherapy and EMD*R, finding my way to give back to the world and my parents’ genes. I wish such a bounty for all of us who have experienced these harms.

Bereavement
Bullying
Child s*xual abuse
Emotional abuse
Economic stressors
Experiencing poor health
Living with household dysfunction
Neglect
Physical abuse
Separation from parents or caregivers

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-27/su***de-prevention-australia-recommendations/106051458/cdee

Su***de Prevention Australia says there's an "urgent" need for action to stop the "significant and lasting" impact of childhood trauma.

04/09/2025

🌿 Many confuse love with s*x, but they are not the same.
Even strangers can share a moment of desire.
🌹 Love is deeper—it is sacrifice, patience, and choosing the same person every day.
It’s listening even when you’re exhausted.
It’s forgiving when your heart feels broken.

🌿 It’s showing up when it would be easier to walk away.
That’s the kind of love that lasts.

31/08/2025

12/07/2025

‘I wish for everyone to have a companion to go through life with, to do nothing with, to have in the other room. You don’t have to be married, but someone who, when you meet, you feel something that you cannot put into words. That is what you should hope and pray for and be available to the possibility of taking place in your existence. When the s**t hits the fan — and in every relationship worth its salt, it will hit the fan — you will reflect on that moment where you couldn’t put into words what you felt about that person, and that is the gold.’ Mandi Patinkin in the NYT

07/07/2025

Impact of AI on employment and firing: ‘from a purely financial perspective, it would increasingly make sense for companies to hire junior employees who used A.I. to do what was once midlevel work, a handful of senior employees to oversee them and almost no middle-tier employees’ NYT

26/06/2025

The basics of communication

11/10/2024

“I’ve spent my adult life studying, writing about and working with leaders and other high achievers. I’ve focused especially on how their early childhood experiences have influenced their adult lives — mostly unconsciously — and on exploring the often vast gulf between how they present themselves on the outside and how they feel on the inside. Mr. Trump, for me, has always been Exhibit A.

Two big lessons I learned from Mr. Trump 30 years ago and that I’ve seen play out in his life ever since with more and more extreme consequences. The first lesson is that a lack of conscience can be a huge advantage when it comes to accruing power, attention and wealth in a society where most other human beings abide by a social contract. The second lesson is that nothing we get for ourselves from the outside world can ever adequately substitute for what we’re missing on the inside.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/11/opinion/trump-movie-apprentice.html

Critics may argue about specific factual details, but a new account of Trump’s ascent jibes with everything I saw with my own eyes.

27/08/2024

Re-uniting and reconciling after a break up? First and most important question: ‘Do we both understand why we broke up?
If you and your partner cannot both articulate a clear answer without defensiveness or tension, that is a red flag.
What patterns hurt your relationship? What deeper issues led one or both of you to see it as unsustainable?” NYT

As Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck show, rekindling an old romance is risky. We asked couples counselors what you should ask before diving back in.

06/08/2024

Changing our model of the self can bring changes to the mythology held to describe our primary relationship. We often get stuck in a story about us as a couple that is a result of our model of our own being&doing self. Change the model will change the relationship, for better and for worse. The truth can hurt as well as free us. Here’s one way to do it.

“Chris Letheby, a philosopher at the University of Western Australia, has spent years thinking about how psychedelics, like psilocybin, can make people feel better. In his 2020 book, The Philosophy of Psychedelics, he proposed that what psychedelic drugs do is change people’s “self-representation”.

“The brain has this model of the self, and in some conditions, it can get dysfunctional,” he said, pointing to conditions that can follow, such as depression, PTSD or addiction. When people take psychedelic drugs, many of them report mystical experiences that are ineffable, ego-dissolving or spiritual. Letheby had suggested these experiences allowed a person to alter their self-perception. They came to view themselves, for example, as worthy of love from others, able to kick addictions and overcome past trauma. This tracked with studies that showed that having psychological insights about oneself or an emotional breakthrough during a psychedelic experience could predict good outcomes.” https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/aug/06/magic-mushrooms-end-of-life-psilocybin/

Some with terminal cancer have said psilocybin helped them confront death. But how that happens is still unclear

10/06/2024

‘In a marriage you have this shared mythology, and you have to share the mythology while your partner’s still alive,” Ciment said. “But once your partner dies, the story becomes yours.”’

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/10/books/jill-ciment-memoir-consent.html

Jill Ciment’s 1996 memoir “Half a Life” described her teenage affair with the man she eventually married. Her new memoir, “Consent,” dramatically revises some details.