As I write this blog, we are entering into the fourth week of so-called ‘lock-down’ across the UK. Despite daily speculation, nobody has any idea how long the restrictions on life will last for. Everything has changed and this has been hard to cope with in a society where stability and the ordinary continuity of…
Why do we get anxious and fearful? The anxiety /fear response is the brain’s way of trying to keep us safe and healthy. Anxiety serves as a faithful reminder of things which the brain assesses need to be avoided, based on past experience. Most of this experience is past or learned experience. This is important…
We are evolutionarily wired for stress. For our early ancestors, inhabiting a natural world beset with predatory dangers the flight/fight response was crucial to survival. The same alarm system exists today for the same survival purpose evolution originally intended. What is different is that today the more likely sources of threat (at least for those…
Most of us have to work in order to live. For many, work can take up a large proportion of our waking lives with up to a third of our lives being spent at work. While the primary reason for working is to make money, our work life can (and should) be much more than…
After the long summer, thousands of new students are heading to university. The start of the academic year is an exciting time for many, but it can also be a difficult, worrying time for some. Students today are subject to different pressures from earlier generations – financial, academic, social – that didn’t affect previous students…
On Friday, everybody in the UK awoke to a new world. The dust has yet to settle and the repercussions of the vote to be enacted; we live in interesting times. Whilst I have a view on whether we should or should not leave the EU, this blog is not about that. It is about…