Relaxation Guide for those who are tense Instructions: Many people find that their bodies are tense and they are experiencing muscle aches/pains. The following exercises may help reduce your level of body tension and have been shown in the scientific literature to be effective when anxiety visits, particularly for those who have body tension and…
If a child feels cared for, loved and validated, they are more likely to achieve success. A mother’s love is a “dangerous instrument”, said John Watson, an American psychologist and early 20th-century behaviourist. He believed that affection from parents stunts children’s emotional development. What a long way we have come from this way of thinking.…
Can’t sleep? You’re not alone. Whether you experience difficulty falling asleep (onset insomnia), or wake several times during the early morning hours (early-morning insomnia), these simple behavioral interventions can assist in developing good nighttime routines. It can be helpful before you start implementing these interventions, to track information about your sleep as it currently is,…
It was almost the end of a 90 minute walk and my friend and I were soaked and cold with one more hill to climb before home to hot showers. I was feeling quite irritable with the situation when my friend commented “Isn’t it amazing that we can ask our bodies to go walking and…
The creation of positive rituals around your stress and recovery time is likely to be a key to your productivity whether at work or at home. In the early 1980s, psychologist Jim Loehr was trying to figure out the difference between tennis stars and those who played well but didn’t quite make it to the…
We’re all probably familiar with the feeling: a sense of regret as we contemplate the approaching end of our holiday. Here are a few tips for easing back into your routine. I asked another psychologist who’d recently returned from a Hawaiian holiday what she practices when trying to readjust to reality. Here are our combined…
Once you identify the triggers that are specific to you, maintaining a healthy lifestyle is much easier. To eat less, you have to put less food in your mouth. Easy, right? If only it were that simple. People who have tried a number of different diets often realise that maintaining a healthy weight is less…
“I want to be happy,” Anne whispered, her eyes on the floor of my office. “My friends tell me that to be happy I just need to think positive, so I say positive affirmations to myself — but it’s not working!” Anne’s situation is not unusual. She is a bright, successful woman, and yet unhappy. …
We all know that exercise is good for us, but in a new book Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, John Ratey explains the latest research on exercise and the brain. He focuses on how exercise benefits many of the problems seen by clinical psychologists and other mental health professionals (stress,…
So often, we have expectations about how events will turn out but what can psychology tell us about managing our expectations? Recently I saw the movie, 500 Days of Summer. In one scene, after the main character, Tom, has broken up with his girlfriend and she has invited him to a party (as friends), we…