Anna Carroll

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 a long night....

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 process. When...

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. The issue is...