Musings of the Mind

False Agency, Real Agency Learning from What Almost Worked One of the most confusing parts of leaving an unhealthy attachment is this: It didn’t feel fake. It didn’t feel imagined. It felt real . That matters. If we dismiss the experience as delusion, we lose the most important information it contains. The state was real — the source was not sustainable In my own experience, a relationship produced something I had been missing: a sense of calm confidence, motivation, and agency. At the same time, it involved self-erasure and dependence. That paradox is the clue. The state itself was real — chemically, emotionally, somatically. But it was externally scaffolded . I did not possess it. I was borrowing it. Why externally scaffolded agency never lasts When agency is supplied by another person: it is fragile, it is conditional, it requires constant maintenance. The nervous system learns: “This state only exists if this relationship holds.” That creates: hyper-vig...

Codependency as Limbic Bypass Accountability, Addiction, and Moral Responsibility For a long time, I understood codependency mainly in emotional terms: need, attachment, fear of abandonment, control. Those descriptions are not wrong — but they are incomplete. What finally clarified things for me was understanding the mechanism underneath the behaviour, and then asking a harder question: Where does moral responsibility actually begin? A limbic problem before it is a relational one At its core, codependency is not simply about personality or love. It is about how two nervous systems attempt to survive without healing . The limbic system is a prediction engine. It learns from experience what leads to safety, agency, or threat. When that system is injured early, people often discover workarounds . In certain relationships, those workarounds interlock. Two complementary bypasses In what we commonly call codependent dynamics, I now see two distinct — but mutually reinforcin...

When Churches Lose Their Moral Centre: Three Pillars of Healthy Leadership There is a growing unease among many committed church members today — not about faith itself, but about leadership. This unease is often hard to articulate, because the problems are rarely dramatic or overt. Instead, they emerge slowly, through patterns that feel “off,” difficult to name, and yet deeply unsettling. Over time, certain failures repeat often enough that they begin to form a recognisable structure. This post outlines three foundational pillars of healthy church leadership — and what happens when they erode. The Three Pillars Healthy church leadership depends on three mutually reinforcing commitments: Protection of the vulnerable Ownership of moral responsibility Authority exercised with accountability and delegation When all three are present, churches tend to be places of safety, growth, and genuine care. When one weakens, the others are strained. When all three fail together, the result...