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The temptation, when we are worried, is to direct our determined intelligence to trying fully to anticipate whatever may be coming for us down the line. We try to strip the unknown of its surprises; we seek, quite understandably, to nothing less than control the future. This is far from…
Given how much we all long to be happy, we might presume that accepting the possibility of happiness in our lives would be an uncomplicated, serene and automatic process. But for…
It is well understood by good parents that life should only ever get so exciting for a baby: after friends have come around and brought presents and made animated faces, after…
During a panic attack, the pervasive worry that we normally carry within us and that is typically content merely gently to corrode away our lives promptly changes tack and decides it…
There are plenty of people who look like good friends – but are not; and therefore many of us who don’t feel we should be lonely – but deep down very…
The temptation, with dealing with anxiety, is always and invariably to focus on the ostensible cause of our worry: the journey to the airport, the forthcoming speech, the letter one is…
What most of us long for above all else is ‘security’, the sense that we are – at last – safe on the earth. We pin our hopes for security on…
We’re used to singing the praises of the human mind and body: these are, from many perspectives, truly astonishing pieces of engineering. We have brains capable of doing fractal equations, translating…
Every human worries on occasion, but for some of us, the suffering is on a quite different and more life-destroying scale: we are, without wishing to be ungrateful or absurd, more…
Many of us are daily tortured by a feeling of imminent catastrophe. Something terrible seems about to happen to us: – We’re going to be abandoned – We’re going to be…
One of the most difficult features of anxiety is that it tends to be all-consuming. It squats in the middle of our minds and refuses to let anything else in or…
One of the most legendary ideas in the history of psychology is located in an unassuming triangle divided into five sections referred to universally simply as ‘Maslow’s Pyramid of Needs’.This profoundly…
One of our deepest longings – deeper than we even perhaps recognise day to to day – is that other people should acknowledge certain of our feelings. We want that –…
The word spirituality has a capacity to divide people like few others. For some, it’s an innately beautiful touchstone, the designator of a special kind of experience that is so valuable,…
You realise that most of the bad behaviour of other people really comes down to fear and anxiety – rather than, as it is generally easier to presume, nastiness or idiocy.…
We have collectively grown highly attuned to the problems associated with a lack of shame around sex: with a decadent culture in which it seems that everything goes, where the atmosphere…
What is reputation?Reputation might be defined as the claim that one can make on the goodwill of strangers; it is what your name will mean to those who don’t know you,…
Modern societies are pretty much in agreement on this score: having children is one of the most meaningful and delightful moves anyone can make. Couples who do not – for whatever…
It can feel very weird, and a bit threatening, to talk about taking the pressure off a relationship. Our collective, inherited Romantic culture likes to imagine functioning couples doing more or…