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…

Canada is reeling over Covid-19

Right now, in the midst of the global pandemic, people around the world are feeling frightened, helpless and out of control. We have no idea what’s coming, whether on a personal, familial, economic or societal level. Here in Canada, this is a relatively new and unpleasant experience for most of us.

In our well-to-do first world country that prides itself on a robust social welfare system, many of us assume that life here includes a good measure…