Reframing Reality

Comorbidity refers to the simultaneous presence of two or more diseases or medical conditions in a patient. Common comorbidities include diabetes, obesity, heart disease, hypertension, dementia, and cancer. These are often described as pre-existing clinical conditions that require extra caution when assessing a patient’s health trajectory.

Reframing aligns with the concept of cognitive restructuring. It is a psychological technique that involves identifying and then changing the way situations, experiences, events, ideas, and emotions are perceived. However, caution is necessary here — without proper professional guidance, one may enter the realm of reality distortion.

An unhealthy example of reframing is excessive mentalisation. Many people engage in this because they believe that fixating on the details of a particular issue — such as a deadline — makes them more productive, when in reality, they are avoiding their emotions.

A more humorous example is reminiscent of old Chaves episodes, where a child would refuse to share their sweets with Chaves, prompting him to respond, “I didn’t want it anyway.” While this may seem like a harmless form of self-consolation, in adulthood, it is always worth questioning whether we are avoiding persistence and determination simply to take the easier path due to anxiety.

Returning to comorbidity, one common misconception is its unfortunate link with fatalism. This is especially damaging when someone convinces themselves that seeking treatment is pointless because a family member or friend did not improve. Ignoring the fact that medicine is constantly evolving is hardly a sign of mental clarity.

Comments

Accounting for the Invisible

It is once more that time of year — the season for gathering documents, for preparing the annual offering to the revenue gods. Tedious, draining, bureaucratic. Yes, all of that. But it is also a curious interval of observation, a quiet adjustment of memory’s lens. After all, the past year — or at least its more tangible husk — lies partially inscribed in these papers. I say partially, for what is captured on the page is a witness of uneven fidelity. Absent are the details, the reasons, the delicate chain of responsibility. The numbers are all there: the income, the transactions, the movement of capital. But backstage remains hidden — the weight of effort, the hush of a conscience at peace. What is left is a pale suggestion of something more vital — this elusive current we call money. Energy transmuted, but only faintly traceable. A flicker of something once vivid, now flattened by ink and deadlines. And so I sift through the papers. Not merely to comply, but to remember. To...

What Strength Truly Means: A Letter to Men

There exists, hidden in the quiet undercurrents of our culture, a grand illusion: that manhood is synonymous with silence, that strength demands the concealment of pain, and that the measure of a man is his ability to endure without faltering. Such ideas pass through generations like whispered codes, accepted without question, repeated without reflection. And yet, when held to the light of reason, they wither like old parchment, for they are not truths, but relics of fear. It must be said — and said without apology — that you are allowed to speak of what has wounded you. To give voice to pain is not to surrender to it, but to name it, to limit its dominion. Silence may seem noble in the moment, but over time it hardens into a cage. Words, carefully chosen and honestly spoken, are the first instruments of freedom. You are allowed to weep — not as an act of collapse, but as a testament to your humanity. Tears are not the language of the weak; they are the body's recogniti...

A Malicious Rejection of Education

There are moments — quiet, unbidden — when one pauses and wonders: how did we come to this? After centuries of inquiry, of minds that charted the unseen and hands that steadied the fevered, we now find ourselves in a peculiar and disquieting place. A place where truth is not refuted for want of evidence, but rejected for daring to inconvenience belief. The antivaxx movement is a malicious rejection of education — not a lapse in understanding, but a deliberate estrangement from reason. It perplexes, not for its novelty, but for its brazenness. This is not the soft silence of the uninformed; it is the clamour of the wilfully blind, adorned in the rhetoric of liberty and cloaked in a defiant performance of scepticism. Vaccines — the elegant product of scientific rigour and logistical triumph — are cast aside in favour of speculation, rumour, and the seductive pull of conspiratorial thinking. To refuse a vaccine is not an emblem of critical thought. It is, more often, a retreat...

The Hyggelig Journey

Search This Blog