What is it? Everyone falls into the doldrums at times, or luxuriates in a bit of self-pity or melancholy. But depression is different. Depression robs the person of vigour and hope, warps the mind, saps the energy and turns the inner world of a person into a prison of isolation and despair. Depression is not […]
New Year's Resolutions The New Year has always been a time for looking back on the past and more importantly contemplating the future and the coming year. It is a time to reflect on the changes we want, or often need to make, to move forward. The word “resolution” comes from “resolve” which means to […]
Happy Christmas Most of us are searching for happiness but are we any happier than our ancestors were? Have you ever been to third world countries, where poverty is rife and you are met with smiling faces everywhere and wondered “how can you be so happy when you have so little?” Almost everything about British […]
As parliament and the country continue to be in a stalemate and divided about how to resolve the question of Brexit, the views of most of the parliamentarians and us citizens around the country become more fixed and polarized. Polarization Polarization is the act of dividing, especially something that contains different people or opinions. The […]
LATE FRAGMENT And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth. “Late Fragment” is the last poem in the last book that Raymond Carver ever published, […]
Self-talk is usually so automatic that you don’t notice it or the effect it has on your moods and feelings. You react without noticing what you told yourself before your reaction. Self-talk often appears as a form of short-hand. One short word or brief image contains a whole series of thoughts, memories or associations. What […]
How We Think Affects How We Feel The way we think about a situation can literally either make it easy to handle or make it impossible to deal with. Our thoughts can calm us down or stir us up. It is even true that simply thinking about an experience from a different point of view […]
What are they? A phobia is a persistent and unreasonable fear of a specific object, activity or situation that results in a compelling desire to avoid that dreaded object, activity or situation. There are three aspects that are different from normal ordinary everyday fears. Firstly you are persistently afraid of the object or situation over […]
What is anxiety? We all experience anxiety from time to time but when someone finds that they are feeling anxious for most of the time this can become a mental health problem. Anxiety affects our whole being. It is a psychological, behavioural and physiological reaction all at once. On a physiological level, anxiety may include […]
Over the last two years most people in the UK have been gripped with Brexit fever regardless of whether you are a leaver, a remainer or a don’t knower or a don’t carer. Whatever the outcome, we will all have to manage the changes that will take place when decisions have been made. Change is […]