I am not naturally a feel-good person. In fact, I am an old cynic. I am not a fan of memes or affirmations even though I know they promote positive thinking. I need to see ‘the difference’ being made.

In March 2020 I remember thinking that lockdown would change people. I am a psychologist and I watched and waited as people tried to make sense of isolation and restrictions. I watched people’s reactions to wearing face coverings and working from home. …

The one question that stumps me is ‘What do you do?’ At parties or networking events or seminars or just down the pub, it’s one of the first questions people who don’t know me ask. I won’t bore you with a list of all the things I do, that’s reserved for those who proclaimed that ‘I would never amount to anything’. Suffice to say I am an executive psychologist author!

So, when I have finished reeling off my daily activities and the concepts around them, the next comment is usually, ‘How do you find time to do all that?’

Headless Chicken Mode

I…

I choose the practical pumps that sit beside the patent work shoes in the hallway. This is not a journey for heels. No. This path is worn into my muscle memory. Every sinew resists, but I pull on the plimsolls and tie the frayed laces.

The bags are in the kitchen cupboard waiting for me. I hurry through and choose four. Three Sainsbury’s and a Waitrose. The small part of me that still fights this asks who am I kidding? It’s a rhetorical question, I tell myself as I fold the bags into tiny triangles.

At least I don’t have…

I take a lot of pride in knowing myself — as a health psychologist and a writer it’s in the job description. Reflexive thinking is the close examination of your biases and preferences then putting them aside to present an unbiased argument. But months out of my busy life have shown me that I still had a lot to learn about myself:

1. I didn’t even know what colour my hair was. I’m 58 years old and I have two jobs. As soon as a sliver of white appeared I ran for the box colour and slammed it on — after…

As a health psychologist I talk a lot about anxiety and how much low level fight or flight stems from our primal brains. COVID-19 is one of the only times in your life that this kind of anxiety is appropriate.

The fight or flight reaction to a threat is produced by the sympathetic division of the automatic nervous system. It produces symptoms that are really our brains and bodies preparing for a major trauma — one that we might not survive. This is controlled by the primal brain in the hindbrain and the medulla.

These symptoms include everything you may…

Lots of people on my social media timeline are anxious at this difficult and uncertain time of Corvid-19. As a psychologist I have tools to help with anxiety and my first line of defence is 7–11 breathing. It sounds new-agey and a little bit twee — and because the Coronavirus can cause shortness of breath and is respiratory a little scary to talk about breathing.

But it works as it activates both psychological and physical responses that help to calm panic and anxiety. …

World news always affects me. I have, I hope, over the years, developed a global conscience that allows me to empathise with people I have never met. Or: a humanity. Along with this, I have tried to develop the breadth of understanding that values and respect the ways people live, even if it doesn’t align with my own particular values. But not everyone has and it shows in their reactions which, in turn, shape their emotions? How does your % reaction measure up. I’ll ask you again at the end of this article.

Finding Empathy

I first noticed this on September 11th…

I’m a psychologist as well as a fiction writer. At a conference the other day someone asked me if I thought that a novel was an example of a psychological narrative and if it was therapeutic to the writer and/or the reader.

The word narrative, used in the context of describing language, is broad-based and therefore complex. The word is used in both literary terminology and in psychological language and although the dictionary definition is ‘a story or account of events, experiences, or the like, whether true or fictitious’ the word has different depths of meaning in these different contexts.

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