Black Lives Matter

The Black Lives Matter protests are continuing into their second week with no signs of abating. And that’s a good thing. It reminds me of the #Time’sUp and #MeToo movement, when things reached a tipping point and there was no turning back. No-one could pretend any longer that there wasn’t a real problem and that things absolutely had to change. The same has happened since the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer.

As a white…

Negativity Bias and the Meta Experience:

I just had an uncanny experience: a recent radio interview went all Meta on me. I was speaking to the host, Devon Peacock, about negativity bias – our tendency to focus on the negative over the positive – and suddenly, for the life of me, I couldn’t remember a word.

The word was Cortisol…

So, you’re at your wit’s end. The four walls are closing in, your kids are starting to drive you crazy, you’re losing patience with your spouse; your finances are in a shambles and you can’t find a moment of peace to be by yourself. Or, maybe you’re living alone and you're so lonely and isolated that you just can’t bear it. What do you do when after more than eight weeks of social distancing you’re on your very last nerve?

People have been getting up to some strange behaviour lately.…

The mental health toll of Covid-19

As all the experts talk about the serious physical health risks of the Covid-19 pandemic, I want to talk about the equally serious risks to our mental health. The fact is that this pandemic is stirring up our deepest, most primordial fears around survival.

Every human being has these primal survival fears – of death, of being alone, of not having enough money, and of living in a dangerous world. Many of us in the West have been fortunate…