Until you deal with your real personal issues, you'll never be able to control yourself. - Chuck Palahniuk

I love being with people. But I need a script, a role, something that will help me overcome my fears of rejection and shame. Most religions and belief systems provide a blueprint for some sort of community. And the religion's leaders model a way of being. For example, in my book Choke, a character enacts his own death and resurrection every night – as does the narrator in Fight Club. Here's Jesus, allowing himself to look terrible in front of his peers. That's the biggest purpose of religious gathering: permission to look terrible in public.

"Telling a story is how we digest what happens to us," Mr Whittier says, "It's how we digest our lives. Our experiences."

History is filled with brilliant people who wanted to fix things and just made them worse.