Say No to New Year’s Resolutions. Here’s a better plan instead… .The start of a new year can stir reflection, pressure, grief, hope, and exhaustion in equal measure. As life resumes after the holidays, many people find themselves quietly taking stock of their mental health, relationships, work, and sense of direction. This article offers a gentle framework for setting intentions and goals for your mental health in the New Year. It’s an invitation to pause, reassess, and approach therapy as a collaborative space shaped around your life, not a performance or obligation.

We grow up believing that love should protect us from pain. That the right partner, the right family, the right choices will deliver certainty, safety, and belonging. But real love rarely lives up to that promise. In this essay, I explore a different way of understanding love — not as perfection or permanence, but as presence. From romantic relationships to parenting and sibling bonds, love is redefined as the willingness to show up, repair, and stay engaged with reality, even when things are messy. This piece is about letting go of idealised versions of love and learning to recognise the quieter, more resilient forms that actually sustain us.

Many people arrive at summer already exhausted, not because they haven’t tried hard enough, but because they have been trying for too long. Managing mental health, attending appointments, doing the inner work, showing up for relationships and daily life all carry a cognitive and emotional load that is rarely acknowledged. This article explores health care fatigue and the idea of intentional non-striving, offering permission to rest without shame. It is not about giving up on therapy or growth, but about allowing the nervous system to settle, letting go of constant self-improvement, and using summer as a time to simply be. Sometimes the most supportive thing you can do for your mental health is to stop pushing forward and allow what is already there to breathe.

Therapy is often imagined as a place where change happens through insight, effort, and emotional work. While this can be true, it is not the whole story. Sometimes therapy is most helpful when it becomes a place to pause rather than push, to reflect rather than analyse, and to sit in safety rather than strive for change. This article explores how therapy can support mental health by helping people consolidate gains, strengthen safe relationships, and recognise that progress does not always look like transformation. Sometimes progress looks like stability, integration, and allowing what has already shifted to settle and take root.

Surviving Chadstone on Black Friday: a psychologist’s personal account of ADHD sensory overload, shutdown and what we can learn from it. A personal story of shopping-centre overload shows how ADHD impacts filtering, prioritising and coping in chaotic environments. Discover why big shopping centres can trigger neurodivergent burnout, and how understanding your sensory and cognitive limits can transform daily life.

The story of Alex Simpson, the woman born without a brain, is reshaping how psychology understands consciousness, connection and what it means to be human. Her life challenges long-held beliefs and supports modern-day suspicions about the brain, awareness and relational presence.

Have you ever noticed how uncomfortable it can feel to sit in a quiet room alone? So many of us reach for our phones, scroll social media, or fill every moment with noise to avoid feeling that emptiness. Yet learning to enjoy your own company can be one of the most life‑changing skills you ever develop.

When we discover how to feel content in our own presence, loneliness begins to soften. Instead of fearing solitude, it becomes a space for restoration, creativity, and even joy. By connecting with nature, observing the rhythms of the universe, and exploring our own inner world, we create a sense of companionship that no one else can give us.

Simple practices like mindful walks in nature, journaling, or just lying under the night sky can shift your experience of being alone from isolating to peaceful. Over time, you begin to realise that the most important relationship you’ll ever have is with yourself—and when that relationship feels strong, life feels fuller, calmer, and more meaningful.

If you’ve ever struggled with loneliness or the fear of being alone, learning how to embrace your own company could be the first step toward a life of deep contentment and emotional resilience.