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Perimenopause is the slow withdrawal of the hormones that helped you put up with things you probably shouldn't have been putting up with in the first place. The job that doesn't pay enough and stopped being fulfilling years ago. The relationship or friendship where the dynamic turned toxic or was always that way, if you're honest. The renovation that keeps getting pushed to next year. The lifestyle changes you know would make you feel better but somehow never quite make it t

It's winter in Australia, and in winter us farmers do bonfires. Yes, it took me years and some serious belief-shedding to be able to call myself that. But that's a story for another post. In conversations while staring at the beautiful flames, a few questions arise: is hypnosis even real? Does it really work? Depending on my mood and the audience, I explain how and why it is. Sometimes at length. Sometimes not. The shortest, funniest answer I've ever given came at the end of

Willpower gets all the credit. You failed to quit sugar, cut back on wine, put down your phone, stop catastrophising at 2am - and somehow you believed that the problem was you. You don't have enough grit. You are not disciplined enough. You are not good enough. If you just tried harder, you'd crack it. I want to offer you a different story. A story where you actually have a fighting chance. A story based on science. The willpower myth Willpower is real and it's a neurological

There's a lot of pointing the finger at mothers. In therapy offices it's practically a century-old tradition - somehow everything traces back to mum. I do wonder, when those psychoanalysts were writing their theories from a quiet study while someone else made their dinner, what exactly they thought was happening on the other side of that door. But that rant is for another day. Today I want to talk about the overwhelmed mother, and the ripple effects this creates in her family

A while ago, a surprising email landed in my inbox. A therapist I trained with, a virtual colleague whose work I genuinely admired, wanted to book a session with me. She came with something quite debilitating: foreboding joy. Every time life felt good, peaceful and content, a creeping dread would follow. Happiness usually means you let your guard down, feel relaxed and at ease. This was not her case. Instead, she felt anxiety, a sense of danger, as if something bad was about

This is going to reveal an embarrassing fact about me. Another proof that I am wired differently. I enjoy watching TV, but I am also very aware that screens are one of the most powerful delivery mechanisms for other people's stories. Media has always been used for propaganda. And from my own experience, the visual representation of people on screen can quietly shape how we see ourselves. In plain words: watching conventionally beautiful Hollywood actresses, women whose appear

Here we are, living in a time of multiple global-level crises or what some call a polycrisis. Many crises all at once, tangled together, influencing each other. If it feels stressful, your body is responding to the situation correctly, but it's more than normal stress. It does not have a deadline. The threat never resolves. And even if it did, the news cycle wouldn't allow it to be gone. It needs to harvest your attention. If it feels overwhelming, you're right. Your physical

Polycrisis is a term describing multiple crises at the same time. I'm sure you could give me a few examples in your own life - I give you one of mine. I was born in Europe, raised as a city girl and enjoyed living in Western Australia for a good decade before the idea of moving to a farm came up. When I married my husband, as it turned out, I stepped into a life his family had been living for generations, and one I hadn't exactly pictured for myself. It all went great, until

I have been collecting ideas for years, and finally I had the laser focus to organise them and use or discard them. This is how I bumped into one by Thomas Campbell, a former NASA physicist and consciousness researcher proposing that our universe operates more like a computer simulation than a fixed physical reality. I found this idea fascinating but didn't have the bandwidth to do anything with it, so it went into the pile of saved articles to be used one day. This often hap

There is a stat that stops me every time I think about it. We are consciously attending to about 0.0004 per cent of the information bombarding our brains at any given moment. The rest is noise our brain filters out just to keep us functional. And yet, somehow, we have built an entire economy around capturing the tiny fraction that gets through. Attention is not a resource. It is your life. We talk about attention as though it is something we have, like money or time. Somethin

Procrastination has a bad reputation. It gets filed under laziness, lack of discipline, poor time management. You probably have a few unkind words for yourself about it too. And yet, knowing all of that has never made it stop. So let's see what can. Procrastination is not a time management problem Here is the first thing worth knowing: procrastination and laziness are not the same thing. Laziness is an unwillingness to make an effort — and even that is often rooted in nervous

We have all been told to set boundaries. As if that is the one thing keeping us from having happy relationships. Once our boundaries are perfect, everyone — even the harmful, immature people — will behave in our presence. Seems too good to be true, right? Well, it's good (yet annoying) advice, but it doesn't convey the full picture. And I'm all about the full picture. What nobody explains about setting boundaries Most boundary advice treats a boundary like a line drawn in the

When people hear the word hypnotherapy, usually one of three things happens. One, they think it's not real. Two, they think I am going to make them cluck like a chicken. Tell me, how is that a useful way of spending anyone's time. Or three, they know someone who used hypnotherapy for anxiety, depression, weight loss, or giving birth. All three are worth addressing. So let's. What hypnotherapy is not It is not being knocked unconscious. You are awake, aware, and in control the

I want you to try something for a second. Take a moment to pause. And to turn your focus inward. And to notice what you are thinking about right now. Not the content of your thoughts. Just the thoughts floating, buzzing around. See them as a weather pattern. Hear them as background noise. All this 'weather' is what scientists at Queen's University in Ontario refer to as thought worms. And according to them, you are having about 6,200 of them today. What science just figured o

I used to love starting my day with the news and a coffee. In bed. It felt like a ritual, like a proper grown-up thing to do. A quiet moment that was mine before the day began. Then Covid hit. And the news changed. The algorithms changed. What used to feel like staying informed rapidly turned into a really dark way of ruining a somewhat positive day. By the time I put my phone down, I'd already shot cortisol through my system before I'd said good morning to anyone. And that w

I love reading research papers about sleep — the kind that detail exactly what the “right” way of sleeping is. That way, I can confirm with scientific certainty that what I’m doing (like a little revenge bedtime procrastination ) is absolutely wrong. Haha. You know that moment when the house finally quiets after a long day of giving, doing, and juggling everyone else’s needs? You’re exhausted, but instead of sleeping — you scroll. Or my favourite combination: checking sale pr

You know that moment when one small thing goes wrong and your mind spirals into a full-blown disaster movie? The late email means you’re getting fired. The weird look means they secretly hate you. The stomach ache means you have three days to live. Welcome to catastrophizing — the brain’s over-protective alarm system. And trust me, I used to be a black belt in it. I could turn a missed text into a 12-episode psychological thriller in under a minute. Some research shows that u

Hypnotherapy is often seen as brainwashing — which always makes me smile a little. If anything, I’d argue advertising and social media do a far better job of that — repetitive, suggestive, and constantly slipping beneath our conscious radar. (That’s a conversation for another day.) It may surprise you, but a form of brainwashin does indeed exist — only it’s not sinister or manipulative. It’s what your brain does naturally when you sleep. Every night, your brain runs its own r

Picture this: your child is outside, climbing trees, pretending to be their favourite character. Suddenly you hear a scream. By the time...

I’d love the beauty commercials to be true. That after a long day or week, all you need is a facemask, a magnesium bath, or the latest...