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The Five Remembrances are simple, timeless reflections on ageing, illness, death, change, and the consequences of our actions. As I sat with them recently, I noticed how facing what we cannot avoid does not make life heavier; it makes the ordinary more vivid, and brings us closer to what truly matters.

Many adults with ADHD describe knowing what they want to do, recognising that it matters, and still being unable to begin. Self-determination theory and the recent research on need frustration explain why, and what reconnection with the conditions for motivation looks like in adulthood.

Discover how retirement psychology helps you redefine life beyond work. Learn to use your strengths to build purpose, joy, and resilience in retirement.

Most adults with ADHD have already tried a great deal before they arrive in therapy. What they often lack is not another strategy but a working picture of the brain they are trying to run. A look at four features of the ADHD brain that, once understood, change the relationship an adult has with their own functioning.

Brainspotting is a body-oriented therapy designed to work with material that talking does not always reach. This post explains what brainspotting is, what is happening in the body and nervous system underneath, what the peer-reviewed research currently shows, and what to expect during and after a session — written in plain terms by a registered psychologist.

Self-help culture says anxiety and intuition feel different and the work is to learn to tell them apart. The current research is more honest about the question. A psychologist on what is actually happening in the body, the conditions that make a gut feeling trustworthy, and a more useful question to ask than which signal you are having.

Not every protective pattern is a problem. Some are still doing their job; some have become the thing in the way. A psychologist on how to tell the difference, with four diagnostic questions you can hold a pattern up against.

Most adults self-medicate in some form. The behaviour is rarely the problem; the function it is serving is. A psychologist on why these patterns persist, three questions that surface what your behaviour is actually doing for you, and the function-replacement framework that makes change possible.

When someone we love is anxious, the instinct is to fix it. The research suggests the opposite. You cannot make them feel safe in their own nervous system. A psychologist on accommodation, the SPACE framework, and a four-step way to support without rescuing.

Anxiety patterns are not just habits — they are protective predictions held in long-term threat memory. They do not weaken from understanding alone. A psychologist on what the system actually needs to update, and a four-step way to work with a persistent pattern.

The small step is not the warm-up. The small step is the work. A psychologist on the comfort zone, the brain's safety signal, and a four-step way to grow your edge gently.

The brain's threat-processing system is doing useful work. The complication is when it stays activated in contexts that no longer require it. A psychologist explains the neuroscience and what helps.

Most of what we do is automatic. The research is clear that judgement is not what changes the pattern — knowing is. A psychologist on the dual-process brain and a four-step way to work with it.

In clinical work with adults with ADHD, procrastination is one of the most consistent things people describe. They describe it with accuracy and usually with some embarrassment. They know what they were supposed to do. They know why it mattered. They can see the cost piling up. And still, somehow, starting did not happen. The feeling they describe is not laziness. It is something closer to standing at the top of a cost they cannot afford to pay yet. The framing most people ar

Retirement is not a finish line. It is a transition that asks for the active rebuilding of meaning, identity, and structure. A psychologist on what the recent research is quietly telling us about how the third act actually unfolds, and what helps it go well.

Breathing is automatic, and that is exactly why it escapes attention. The clinical evidence suggests automatic is not the same as optimal. This piece explains what breathing retraining is, the four dimensions along which breathing patterns go wrong, and why nasal breathing specifically matters. It also covers what the recent evidence says about the social media trend of mouth taping.

Breathing is the one part of the nervous system we can consciously influence. This piece explains what breathwork is, what the research says about it, and how to try slow diaphragmatic breathing at around six breaths per minute, the technique with the strongest general-population evidence base.

The popular story about ADHD says low dopamine and cortisol-fuelled deadlines. The actual research says something more specific. A psychologist explains what the imaging and endocrine literature really shows.

For most adults with ADHD, sleep difficulty is not a side-issue to be solved by better habits. The peer-reviewed evidence increasingly frames it as a core feature of the condition, often driven by a delayed circadian rhythm. This piece walks through what the research actually shows and why that shift in framing matters.

ADHD burnout is not a character flaw or a lack of discipline. The peer-reviewed evidence increasingly frames it as the predictable outcome of executive function strain, emotion regulation load, and the hidden cognitive work of masking, accumulated over time. This piece walks through the research and what genuinely helps.