Stephen – författare

How dare you!

Dares make our heart pound with anticipation and charge our hair with electricity. Closet Desire II captures that tantalizing, pulse-quickening moment just before you leap and then pushes you over the edge without warning. These tales will threaten to stop your heart and leave you gasping for breath. Inspired by an anonymous group of writers who dare one another to spin erotic yarns, Closet Desire II carries on the tradition of Closet Desire with stories that are seductive and surprisingly human. Stories from Angela Wallis, Felecia Barbaro, Jason Charles, and others will take you where you never dared to go in a variety of ways.

Some are humorous.

Some are naughty.

Some are taboo.

Some are mystical.

All are daring.

We dare you!

Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925–2006) was one of Scotland''s leading twentieth-century public intellectuals, and famously one of its most brilliant and combative correspondents. His letters raise issues of particular and widespread interest both within Scotland and further afield. His correspondence with Stephen Bann, the English poet and academic, have a very special place in this context. These letters present in a clear and commensurable form the development of his ideas about poetry and art, and increasingly about sculpture and gardening, over this critical five-year period of his creative life.

The letters begin when Bann was still a student at Cambridge, and Finlay was living in considerable hardship in Edinburgh, though he already had a significant international reputation as a poet. They reveal in fascinating and intimate detail the poet''s developing creative process, and also record his often turbulent relationship to the worlds of literature, art, and critical journalism. When he settles in Lanarkshire, he begins to develop the ideas that will result in the creation of the world-famous sculpture garden known as Little Sparta.

This book, edited, introduced, and annotated by Bann himself, is a unique and compelling self-portrait of the man who is now recognized not only as a great poet, but also as a major artist and one of the most original garden designers of modern times.

Stephen Bann is a poet, historian, and cultural critic. He is an emeritus professor of the history of art at Bristol University, and the author of numerous books and articles.

Your mind won't stop. And you can't make it stop. No matter how hard you try.

You've tried positive thinking. You've tried journaling. You've tried telling yourself the thing you're worrying about probably won't happen. And fifteen minutes later the loop is running again, reviewing the same conversation, generating the same worst-case scenario, preparing for the same event that hasn't happened yet—with the same relentless creativity and the same complete failure to actually resolve anything.

You're not broken. You're not too sensitive. You don't have a defective mind.

You have a nervous system that learned, in a specific environment at a specific time, that thinking harder was the most reliable protection against uncertainty. Your brain developed this pattern because it was intelligent and responsive and it found a strategy that worked. The problem is simply that the strategy has outlived its usefulness and no one has given your nervous system the update that a genuinely different approach is now available.

73% of adults report significant overthinking. Among 25-35 year olds the figure exceeds 80%. The mental health costs are well-documented. The solutions being offered—think more positively, keep a gratitude journal, worry less—are so poorly matched to the actual mechanism of the loop that they produce not relief but a specific additional failure: you tried the standard solutions and they didn't work, which the loop immediately converted into evidence that you are too far gone even for the standard solutions.

You are not too far gone. The standard solutions simply weren't designed for the specific problem you have. This book is.

Drawing on the latest neuroscience, cognitive-behavioural research, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and polyvagal theory, Quiet the Loop takes you through the complete journey:

Inside every chapter:

Plus: The 30-Day Quiet the Loop Reset—one specific action per day, beginning today.

The goal is not a mind with no thoughts. It is a mind that can watch its thoughts without being imprisoned by them. That mind is available to you.

Scroll up and click 'Buy Now'—the loop has been running long enough.

Do you say yes when you mean no—so automatically you barely notice you've done it?

You're known as the kind one. The generous one. The person who always shows up, never complains, and somehow always knows what everyone else needs. You're described as easy to be around and you've never quite known how to explain why that description makes you feel so unseen.

Because behind the warmth and the reliability and the endless accommodation, something is missing. You. The full, genuine, sometimes-inconvenient, takes-up-actual-space version of you.

What you're experiencing has a name. It's called the fawn response—the fourth trauma response, alongside fight, flight, and freeze. It developed when making yourself agreeable was the most reliable way to stay safe. And your nervous system, which hasn't received the update that safety is now available, is still running that programme today in every relationship you have.

49% of adults identify as chronic people-pleasers. Among those who experienced emotionally volatile or conditional early environments, it rises to 74%. You are not uniquely broken. You are running a very old programme in a new world.

This book is the update your nervous system has been waiting for.

Drawing on neuroscience, trauma research, somatic therapy, and attachment theory, Stop Disappearing takes you on a complete four-part journey from understanding through healing through rebuilding:

Every chapter includes:

Plus: The 30-Day Reclaim Reset—one specific action per day so recovery begins the moment you open the first page.

This book will not ask you to become someone different. It will help you become the person you always were—before you learned to disappear.

Scroll up and click 'Buy Now'—the real version of you has been waiting long enough.