I decided to pursue self-employment after working for ten years with the same organisation. In that ten years, my anxiety and confidence levels fluctuated, but I don’t recall a time when I didn’t feel scared to talk to people at work. My life has been blighted by social anxiety for over two decades, and …
I hadn’t heard of febrile seizures until my seven year old son Dylan had his first one at the age of two, but I certainly know enough about them now. I know the fear of witnessing his little body shaking so violently it looked like he could break apart, and of thinking that my son …
Have you heard the term ‘doomscrolling?’ It’s the newest catchy phrase doing the rounds online and I can’t think of a word which so aptly sums up the habit it’s describing. Doomscrolling or doomsurfing is “the tendency to continue to surf or scroll through bad news, even though that news is saddening, disheartening, or depressing.” …
Family: the people you love more than anyone and the ones who can hurt you the most. Family dynamics are complicated, and often become more so as we grow older. As children we never stop to question whether we actually like our family. Our parents and siblings are just there and that’s all there is …
Recently an incident occurred in which my anger got the better of me and I felt ashamed of myself. This isn’t something I thought I’d be saying at the age of 35, but it’s got me thinking about female anger and how it differs from male anger. The incident It was our first outing to …
Like many parents across the UK, I am both eagerly and anxiously awaiting the start of the new school year in September. When I ask Dylan (aged seven, going into Year 3) and Charlie (aged five, going into Year 1) how they feel about returning to school, I’m most often met with an indignant “boring!” …
Recently something amazing happened. After years of feeling that my chronic depression is somehow inauthentic or inadequate in some way, I read an article which changed my perspective and alleviated some of my feelings of not quite belonging to the genuine depression club. The article describes something called smiling or atypical depression, and literally every line …
If, like me, you sighed a familiar sigh at reading about the government’s new strategy to tackle obesity in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, you might agree with a lot of what I’m going to say. It’s a noble effort of course, made all the more pertinent due to recent, albeit tenuous, links between …