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Image: Winter reflections at Lossiemouth Beach, Moray. As the year ends, I’ve been reflecting on my work with people experiencing OCD, a condition often driven by persistent doubt and “what if” thinking; and on some of the clinical questions that have stayed with me. One of the most enduring has been: how do we know when an anxious thought is OCD, and when it’s a reasonable signal about something in our environment that deserves attention? In some commonly recognised presenta

Do you get lost in worry? Many of us do. Thinking about challenges can be helpful because it sometimes leads to insight or solutions. This is known as productive thinking . Worry, however, is unproductive thinking.  It generates anxiety by holding in mind multiple bad things that might  happen while simultaneously trying to plan and prepare for all of them. During worry, the mind can jump from one imagined catastrophe to the next without resolving any of them. Worry can easil

Why Avoiding Emotions Doesn’t Work When strong, uncomfortable emotions show up, it can feel natural to avoid, ignore, or try to fix them. After all, that’s how we deal with many challenges in our environment, and those strategies often work. You might avoid a traffic jam, ignore a rude comment, or fix a broken chair. It makes sense that we want to move away from uncomfortable feelings too. But here’s the problem: Emotions aren’t external events to dodge or repair—they live wi

Have you seen this trend on social media? People creating an image of themselves hugging their younger self? I couldn’t resist, because...

As a psychologist, it’s not uncommon for clients or potential clients to ask me: “Do I need therapy?” It’s such a human question, and...

When something today pulls you back into the past, how do you return to the here and now? Image AI generated Trauma can leave the body...

We are meaning making machines, living in biological bodies. So, when our bodies send signals to our brain during our interactions with...

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)  is a recommended treatment for phobias, and a key part of this approach is exposure —facing the...

I listened to this book on audible. It is also available in paperback at Moray Libraries 📖  272 pages 🎧 5 hours 45 minutes Overview...

When I was first introduced to grounding exercises, I’ll admit I rolled my eyes a little. They seemed so.… irrelevant to the distress...

Therapy is expensive. This is an uncomfortable truth. And in therapy we don’t avoid, shy away from, minimise, or dismiss uncomfortable...

We are creatures of habit and change is hard. Even when we choose to change, it can be tough to make it stick. It’s common to falter, to...

When faced with uncertainty, it’s often easier to imagine everything that could go wrong than to consider what might go right. But why? ...