I have two kids. Let’s just say there’s very often a bit of healthy sibling rivalry going on between them. Actually, scratch that. “Healthy” might be overselling it. Sometimes it’s more like a Cold War with occasional hot skirmishes over who gets the last biscuit or who sits in the front seat of the car….
A high proportion of people do as they’re told. They go through life ticking boxes, keeping to the rules, conforming, thoroughly playing their part in society as a whole. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Society functions because most people follow most rules most of the time. We drive on the correct side of the…
Have you ever driven somewhere familiar, arrived at your destination, and realised you can barely remember the journey? You stopped at the right junctions. You indicated at the right moments. You navigated the route correctly. But consciously? You were somewhere else entirely. Thinking about work, replaying a conversation, planning your evening. The driving just happened….
I’ve never actually seen a person with a halo above their head. Yet every single day, I watch good-looking people, popular people, and charismatic people get more credence in meetings than they really should be getting. I see attractive people in adverts selling you watches, perfumes, and lifestyles you don’t need. And I see you…
I want to tell you about a patient I saw in my consulting room. He was a smoker, had been for decades, and wasn’t interested in stopping. We’d had the conversation more than once. The health risks were well established and he knew them. But he had an answer ready every time. His grandfather had…
Before I go any further, let me be clear about something. I’m not suggesting you’re some kind of narcissistic sociopath hell-bent on destroying everyone and everything around you. But I am about to tell you about a cognitive bias that might make you look in the mirror and wince a bit. Because all of these…
A few years ago, I worked with a patient who was struggling badly with anxiety. Not the occasional nerves most people experience before something important, but a persistent, debilitating pattern that was affecting her work, her relationships, and her confidence. At the centre of it was a physical experience she’d come to dread: the racing…
You’re doing it again. You’ve just taken what I said, twisted it through your mental gymnastics machine, and spat it back out as something I never actually meant. You’re sitting there asking, “So you’re saying if I don’t do this perfectly, I’m a complete failure?” No. That’s not what I’m saying. That’s what you’re hearing…
A friend of mine, miserable and exhausted from her job, underpaid compared to colleagues elsewhere, had been offered a role at another practice. She wasn’t taking it. When I asked why, she said something I’ve heard dozens of times in various forms. “But what if it doesn’t work out? What if the new place is…
You know those people who always seem to find evidence that the world is against them? The ones who can turn a perfectly decent day into a catalogue of disasters? The ones who, no matter what happens, somehow manage to prove to themselves that yes, life really is as terrible as they thought it was?…