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Gratitude is a powerful practice, especially when it’s practised regularly. Research is continuing to uncover the benefits of gratitude and the various mental and physical benefits it has on us. Let’s look at a few of those to give you an idea of what you can expect if you start to focus on experiencing gratitude daily. 

The benefits of a writing gratitude practice with anxiety

Practicing gratitude helps your overall mental and physical health because you instantly have a better outlook on life. Don’t be surprised to walk away from your latest gratitude practice, whatever it is, with a big smile on your face. Of course, the benefits don’t stop at increased happiness. Experiencing more gratitude has been linked to increased movement, a better self-image, less anxiety and even a reduction of depression. 

Does this sound too good to be true? Scientists have found that intentional gratitude mediations result in increased levels of...

Have you been sitting on a decision hoping that the answer will emerge only to find that waiting for it is making you feel more agitated and upset? That is how many of my clients feel before they book in to see me. 

In the last couple of weeks, I have started working with a number of people who are struggling to reach a decision on their own. This is not because they lack the necessary decision-making skills or that they lack the necessary information to make the decision but more because whichever decision they make, someone close to them will be upset or let down. 

These aren’t decisions about what car to buy, although it’s important, but rather life-changing ones like which country to live in, who to settle down with or to start a family or not. These decisions tend to take more time and require deeper thought so it’s not unusual for you to sit on them and wait for an indication on what to decide. However, if waiting for a clue is...

The world is moving on post-pandemic and face to face networking events are returning. For the confident extrovert that’s music to their ears. For the socially anxious it can be a terrifying thought.

Of course, we’re all a little out of practice thanks to working from home and attending events online but it won’t take long for confident networkers to dust off their in-person networking muscles and put the rest of us to shame. Further raising the stakes for socially anxious adults who need to network for work.  

What’s the difference between social anxiety and shyness?

With shyness, you are able to recognise your discomfort and progress through your discomfort to a level of comfort. A person who suffers from social anxiety will be overwhelmed by the prospect of the discomfort and may feel nauseas, even vomit, beforehand and may not even engage with their discomfort.

What does this look like you might ask? Well, imagine you are in a...

The relationship you have with yourself is the most important relationship you are ever going to have. It influences your other relationships, and it sets the tone for how you treat yourself and allow others to treat you. Your second most important relationship, if you want to do well, is how you manage stressors.

Stress is normal and inevitable

While stress is a normal and inevitable part of modern life, it doesn’t have to be the reason why you didn’t achieve your goals. In fact, it could be the reason why you do achieve them.

In my corporate career I worked with many smart people who had varying successes in the organisations I was a part of. And while they all had the same access to learning and development, few knew how to ask for help for fear of being considered soft or weak, and even less considered their relationship with stress as their biggest obstacle. Yet in my view, it was their relationship with stress that enabled them to take a broad view or...

Everyone experiences anxiety from time to time. Afterall there are always going to be unexpected circumstances that come up in life that leave you feeling more worried, scared, or anxious than usual.

Experiencing anxiety is part of being human and it may surprise you to hear that it is a normal process designed to get you into action. That said, if you suffer from anxiety every now and again or if it gets in the way of your daily living, you're not alone. Millions of adults suffer from anxiety and in Australia one in five adults reported feeling stressed or anxious most/all of the time (Melbourne Institute 2021). It is the most common mental health condition in Australia.

If you are someone who suffers from anxiety on a regular basis, it can be helpful for you to learn about your triggers. Identifying anxiety triggers can help you stop an anxiety attack from happening. It can also help you lessen the severity of other anxiety symptoms.

Anxiety Symptoms

If the thought of social get-togethers leave you feeling anxious, then you need to learn how fight or flight works in your body, so you can calm your fight or flight response when you’re with others.

These holidays you may be catching up on socializing, and you may even be celebrating the holidays in large groups. The prospect of this can be daunting and for many this can be overwhelming, especially if you are out of practice meeting in big groups, or if you prefer smaller groups and lots of quiet time. If this, is you, then you may already be familiar with the fight or flight response—a catch-all term for how humans and many other animals respond to threat. However, you may be less familiar with how this natural response becomes less helpful when activated too often.

In this blog, I’ll discuss how the fight or flight response is an evolutionary adaptation that helps us deal with immediate threats, and how it is not best suited to present-day...

Ever felt like if you had to make another decision your head would explode? That's sign you need to declutter your mind. 

Decluttering your life and becoming organized starts with one important but easily-overlooked step. You need to declutter your mind first.

If your home and office looked anything like mine last week, it is long overdue for a declutter. While my office isn’t as neat as I’d like it to be, it’s as neat as it’s going to be before I move back into my office in the city. Research shows that if the spaces you inhabit are cluttered and disorganized, chances are your mind is too. Mental clutter creates restlessness, moving between brooding over the past to worrying about the future. You know it’s cluttered when you go through your mental to-do list and are overwhelmed at the thought of what you need to do. And that’s not all, mental clutter is exhausting and fruitless. It stops you from getting things done.

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In psychoanalytic theory, a defence mechanism is an unconscious psychological process that occurs to protect a person from anxiety-producing thoughts and feelings related to internal conflicts and outer stressors. The goal of these defence mechanisms is to separate the person from the unpleasant events, actions, or thoughts. They help people to distance themselves from threats or unwanted feelings, such as guilt, anger or shame.

Defence mechanisms are a natural way of being for humans and other animals. For example, sea slugs (main pic) squirt out their own intestines to make a veiled escape. Birds like peacocks and turkeys ruffle their feathers. Small animals like bugs and frogs carry poisons and colours on their backs to scare away predators—or punish stubborn ones. When it comes to people, unconscious patterns of behaviour provide protection against perceived threats. Unfortunately they also have the impact of separating us, when all we want is to connect in the...

Do you get Sleep Panic Attacks?

Many clients who come to see me to improve their sleep, share they regularly suffer from what I call sleep panic attacks. A panic attack is when you experience a sudden intense feeling of anxiety accompanied by a feeling of impending doom and frightening physical symptoms, such as a racing heartbeat, shortness of breath, or nausea. A sleep panic attack is when you experience an intense fear that you aren’t going to be able to enjoy a good night’s sleep when it’s time to and these thoughts spiral out of control as the day progresses. Sadly, they also become the self-fulfilling prophecy for many. There is no specific trigger for it except there is a history of poor sleep, so the prospect of a bad night’s sleep is somewhat real.

Poor sleep affects 1 in 3 people and if this isn't you, then it’s possible you know someone who suffers sleep panic attacks. It is challenging for these people to sustain new intimate...

As humans we have become less connected to nature and as a result risk losing our essential health buffer.

When you have a busy work week and a family to care of, any opportunity to take care of yourself is precious. One of the easiest ways to do this is to step out into nature and let it do the rest.

How it works

When something happens and we perceive it as a threat, or we are asked to do more than we perceive we're capable of then we experience stress, i.e. a mismatch between what we can and have been asked to do. Once we have this thought our sympathetic nervous system, the ‘fight or flight’ branch of our autonomic nervous system, is activated. When we experience nature, our parasympathetic nervous system is activated, ‘the rest and digest’ branch of the autonomic nervous system, and its activation counteracts the already activated sympathetic nervous system. When the parasympathetic nervous system is activated more than our sympathetic nervous...