Body falling apart. Pain from head to toe. Wrinkles and floppy bits. Hair not growing where it’s meant to. Memory fading. Energy depleting. Losing life partners, siblings and friends. Loneliness. Financial worries…. It is true that aging can be depressing and stressful at times....
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Christmas is depicted as a time of joy and pleasure: families coming together and having fun, lots of giving and sharing, sparkling lights and decoration, great food, and children brimming with excitement for their new toys; not to mention all the warm and loving...
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Do you long to return to the honeymoon phase of your relationship? Have you and your partner drifted into an unsatisfying union? Do your interactions frequently turn into arguments? Have you even started to consider separation? Imagine if you were able to turn your...
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Depression and anxiety can spread through families like contagious diseases, and children are the most vulnerable to contamination. How Depression is Spread Partners of people with depression often complain of feeling as if they are living near a black hole which is draining their...
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Thoughts, images and feelings are all a normal part of our internal human world, and we wouldn’t want to be without them. They can fuel our creativity, they can drive and motivate us, they can keep us safe, and they can bring us passion,...
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Partners can be incredibly annoying. They are very skilled at pressing our buttons and engaging us in arguments over nothing, but it is possible to change this pattern. Most of us can’t stand to be told by our spouse that we are wrong and...
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When parents come to me for help with a child, they naturally start by telling me what is wrong with their child and what behaviours or emotional responses they would like to get rid of or change.  That is totally understandable. If a child...
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My mother has dementia: Alzheimer’s we’re told. She’s 79, fit as a fiddle physically, and still coordinates her wardrobe with some of her old style most of the time, but it’s hard for her to maintain a train of thought for long. Mum’s working...
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For all their lovability, children can be extremely frustrating and worrying people; especially from the perspective of their parents. As a practicing psychologist, I have worked with literally thousands of frustrated and anxious parents struggling to manage the behavioural and emotional responses of their...
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Feeling depressed and unhappy can really bring you down.  Rates of depression in our population are increasing radically. In the USA rates are ten times higher than they were in the great depression of last century, and people are getting depressed much earlier in...
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It is well known that psychological trauma of any sort can have a lasting, damaging effect on human beings. The earlier the trauma, the more profound the effect, so the impact of a difficult birth on the infant as he develops  into a child...
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Parents are often encouraged to give their children attention, but too much of the wrong kind of attention for the wrong kind of behaviour can be bad for children. Point one: Children love and need attention, and for many reasons, some children need much...
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Food is essential to human life, and it can feel good to eat, but how does what we consume affect our mental and emotional states once we have left the dinner table? Some Stuff is Bad Loads of studies have linked diet to mental...
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Why is it that some people easily create great relationships, while for others every relationship seems to end in disaster?  Why are some people generally happy, while others are miserable? Why is it that some people are regularly unwell, while others fly through life...
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Negotiating intimate relationships is one of the hardest challenges most of us face in our lifetime. When they are working, they are amazing, but when they are not, they can be tricky and traumatic. We can get into dysfunctional patterns of relating to anyone...
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