When we are suffering with thoughts, feelings, body sensations, experiences, or memories, it can sometimes be useful to chart the journey of others who have struggled in similar ways.

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche who I came to quite late in my reading life, never having studied philosophy as a subject, experiencing it for the most part a somewhat intimidating domain, struggled with health issues, both physical and mental, for much of the time he was on this planet.

If he were alive today, I suspect he might have been diagnosed with having fibromyalgia, or another issue that highly sensitive folk often struggle with.

What I find inspiring about his life is that he seems to have landed on a way, at least for a while, of finding value, meaning, and joy at the same time as being ill on a constant basis.

I think this short chapter from the novelist Stefan Zweig’s recent book on Nietzsche gets to the heart of a paradox that often arises in psychotherapy, but also in our lives in general: how to “love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it,” as the poet Ellen Bass laments, “and everything you’ve held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands”?

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Full text of this episode can be found here.

Please feel free to get in touch either by email or telephone (07804197605) if anything in this piece has spoken to you in some way, or to book a consultation.

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