Author: Overcoming Adversity | Buteau’s Odyssey

This post is Part 1 of a series. There are moments on the path to healing with dissociative identity disorder (DID) that don’t get talked about enough. Not the diagnosis. Not stabilization. But the moment when parts of you begin to come together—not conceptually, but in real time. I am currently moving through another fusion. A protector part, Maria. Fierce. Bossy. “Daddy’s princess.” Aggressive. She was necessary when I was young. She is no longer needed in the same way now that my system is no longer living in “trauma time.” The Complex Lived Experience of Integration Integration is often…

We’ve all heard someone sigh about their steady, reliable partner, sheepishly admitting something like, “They’re great… but a little boring.” Emotionally stable partners, the ones who stay calm in an argument, don’t blow up over spilled milk, and never send dramatic 4 a.m. texts, are often ideal in long-term relationships. But for a lot of people, especially in the early stages of love, that emotional steadiness can translate to a sense of predictability or even mild dullness. This isn’t just cliché. Relationship science and personality research give us real reasons why stability and “excitement” often register as mutually exclusive relationship…

If you grew up on a farm with animals, odds are that no one needed to teach you about procreation. With your own eyes, you observed the mechanics of reproduction. But I grew up in the far reaches of Brooklyn where the only animals I observed, other than pets, were feral dogs. They roamed from nearby wetlands and copulated wherever they wandered. So my sex education was seeing a dog mount another, then walk on their legs as if glued to their mate’s rear, a hilarious sight in an eight-year-old’s eyes. My friend, a little older than me and, of…

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The best way to manage our feelings is to face them head-on and work through them. This, of course, does not mean that we should take them out on other people. A person who is not grounded may not have a good handle on regulating mood and may have a hard time lessening the severity of what they feel. To counter this, they can try down-regulation, something that therapists use in the therapeutic setting. For example, feeling angry about getting rear-ended doesn’t mean we should have an intense shouting match with the offender. Down-regulating can be like shifting the gears…

Devil’s Class – A chilling 80pg horror mystery graphic novel: Now on Kickstarter!: “Invader Comics is proud to present “Devil’s Class”, the newest demented creation from the savage mind of Eli Powell. When we first found Eli, we were stuck by the intensity, the brutality, and the beauty of his work. The fact that it’s all hand-drawn only makes it more rare. First, we published his graphic novel “Ravage” – a book we described as a “horrific terror-storm of violence and brutality”. Eli’s follow-up effort – “Still” – was something different. Whereas “Ravage” was raw, savage, and blood-soaked, “Still” offered a…

England struggles without their talismanThe disappointing loss at Wembley followed a disjointed 1-1 draw with Uruguay last week, leaving Tuchel with plenty of questions ahead of the World Cup. With their captain watching from the stands, England failed to find a cutting edge. Manchester City star Phil Foden was deployed as a false nine but struggled to make an impact, while previous experiments with Dominic Solanke and Dominic Calvert-Lewin have also failed to produce a convincing alternative to Bayern Munich star Kane.Tuchel defends Kane dependency When asked if the squad are too dependent on their 32-year-old captain, Tuchel pointed towards…

VHS Haven’s Hiram Dobbs demonstrates the radical resurgence of a once-dead media formatHiram Dobbs, a long-time connoisseur of the VHS format, practically grew up at the video store.“All of my earliest memories of movies or anything, it’s always on tape,” the 32-year-old CEO of VHS Haven recounts. “It was always at a sleepover, it was always hanging out with your cousins or something — an adult puts on a tape to keep you busy.”Dobbs initially launched VHS Haven as an Instagram account, primarily to show off his extensive collection of video cassettes. “It really blew up and I just wanted to…

Workplace stress and burnout could be worsening. As results roll in from data collected the previous year, researchers are finding: Work is invading personal time: Meetings after 8:00 p.m. are up 16 percent since the previous year, 29 percent of employees return to their email inbox by 10 p.m., 40 percent check email before 6:00 a.m., and 20 percent work on weekends (Microsoft, 2025). Workplace strain is widespread: Globally, 40 percent of employees report having experienced “a lot” of stress the previous day, including 50 percent in the United States and Canada (Gallup, 2025). Burnout is rising: Surveys of thousands…

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