Ageing is something we all experience, but our relationship with it is often much more complicated than simply getting older. It can bring us face to face with questions about time, control, missed opportunities, changing relationships and the expectations we have carried about where we thought we “...

A child who refuses to enter a classroom, asks the same question repeatedly or suddenly stops going to an activity they used to enjoy may be showing you that something feels difficult. Anxiety does not always arrive with the words “I’m worried”. It can look like irritability, stomach aches, trouble ...

Even if you are no longer at school, have no children, and are not about to begin a new job, there can still be something about the end of August and beginning of September that feels like a major transition.

For many of us, September brings back-to-school energy: new routines, fresh starts, packed...

Most of us are familiar with the feeling that we should be doing something useful.

There is always an email to answer, a cupboard to sort out, a job to finish, a form to complete, a phone call to make, or a vaguely threatening item that has sat on a to-do list for so long that we now avoid looking ...

Attachment theory seems to be everywhere at the moment. It appears in relationship podcasts, TikTok videos, bestselling books and conversations about everything from dating and friendships to family tensions and workplace dynamics. People happily describe themselves as anxious, avoidant, secure or f...

I was recently invited to contribute to the cover feature of the June 2026 edition of Therapy Today, the professional journal of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP). The article explores one of the most talked-about topics in mental health at the moment: family estrangem...

People are often surprised by how differently we all remember childhood.

One person can describe the layout of their primary school classroom in vivid detail, remember conversations from when they were six years old, and recall family holidays almost scene by scene. Meanwhile, someone else may stru...

Many of us will recognise a very particular kind of mental loop, even if we don’t always talk about it openly. You leave a conversation, perhaps something quite ordinary, and within minutes your mind starts replaying it. What did I say? Did that come across badly? Should I have phrased that differen...

There’s a phrase that has recently been appearing more and more in online conversations about therapy: “CBT feels gaslighty.”

Gaslighting is a strong word, and when people use it, they’re usually trying to describe a very real experience. It’s the feeling that their thoughts or emotions have been d...

Over the past few weeks I’ve been talking a lot in the therapy room about something that many people notice but rarely name: the way weather can get under our skin. So I was really pleased to be extensively quoted by Kerry Law in her recent piece for Stylist exploring meteorosensitivity, the psychol...

February has arrived. The days are still short, the weather is rarely kind, and by the time Valentine’s Day rolls around there’s often a sense of being emotionally ambushed by hearts, roses, and the implication that being coupled is the gold standard of happiness. For many of my clients, especially ...

Uncertainty has a particular way of getting under the skin. It is not always the big, obvious stressors that cause the most anxiety, but often it's those little gaps where information is missing: Waiting to hear back. Not knowing where you stand. Sensing that something might be wrong without being a...