Innehållsförteckning för May 2025 från Psychologies

“When most of us take up a hobby, we might do it at the weekend, or perhaps every week or two. Not Gretchen Rubin. When the best-selling author of The Happiness Project starts a hobby, boy, does she start a hobby. She’s visited the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York every day for more than five years (closures excepted), and now she has a new passion. ‘One of the things I’m doing in 2025 is I’m water colouring every single day,’ she tells me. ‘I’m kind of an all-or-nothing person, and so, for me, it’s easier to do something every day.’ It’s this single-mindedness, one could even say obsessiveness, while focusing on something so ephemeral as art, that makes Rubin so fascinating. On the surface she is, to…

As a teen and young adult, I could read for vast swathes of time undistracted. But recently, I read a (short!) newsletter, where the writer bemoaned the fact that she can no longer read for a solid half hour without getting distracted. Challenge accepted! I set a 30-minute timer and grabbed my book. Surely, I could manage half an hour? Reader, I reached for my phone four times before the timer went off! I know I am not alone in noticing that my attention span is not what it used to be, and perhaps we have come to accept the ubiquitous perception that our attention spans are shrinking. But is there actually any truth to this? A 2022 study conducted by King’s College London found that 49% of people reported…

A few days ago I was going through some drawers to declutter, and found one of my most treasured possessions. It is a letter from 1907, written to my great grandmother, Harriet. Before she married, Harriet had been in service with a local upper-class family, and it was a note from one of the young ladies she served. In beautiful handwriting, Miss Emmie, as my great grandmother knew her, sends Harriet her condolences on the death of her father, and of her child. Both had died in the few months since the pair last saw each other, and Harriet was to lose another child before my grandmother was born a couple of years later (who was named Gladys Emily, after her ladyship). It’s all ancient history, of course, and well…

There used to be an advert on TV years ago, with the line ‘we don’t make a drama out of a crisis’. I’ve used and abused that line many times, and also been guilty of doing exactly that. But it doesn’t necessarily even need to be a crisis: sometimes we can make anything into a drama, if we come at it in that frame of mind. It might seem a completely reasonable thing to worry about: your partner’s ex getting in touch out of the blue; your boss being funny with you at work; that thing your mother-in-law said about your hair over Sunday lunch… It’s not just earth-shattering worries that can keep us up at night. But particularly when we’re already in a heightened state of emotion, the everyday…

Taking off your make-up or cleansing your face often feels like the last thing you want to do after a long day. But chiselling out time to wash off the day and feed your skin with some much-needed nutrients is a great way to kick off your bedtime routine right — and sneak in some wind-down benefits at the same time. So, here skincare and traditional Chinese medicine experts reveal how you can turn your boring, bog-standard beauty routine into a daily self-care ritual. Don’t make it a chore... While it may sound overindulgent, not rushing through your skincare is integral for the health and overall look of your skin. ‘In recent years, the world of skincare has witnessed a rise in natural and holistic remedies, with Traditional Chinese Medicine…

Kate Lawler practically vibrates with energy and curiosity, jumping with thoughts, feelings and opinions she has no qualms sharing. Whether it’s the micro-needling she had the day before, her skin still smarting (‘I look a little bit Donald Trump!’), her love of a pisco sour or postnatal depression, she’s frank, funny and really quite dazzling. You can see why she captured the nation’s attention in 2002, winning arguably the most iconic ever series of Big Brother. At just 22, not only was she the first female winner, her cohort also included Jade Goody, Alison Hammond and Adele Roberts. Twenty-three years on and people still stop her to ask about it, and whether she’d do the celebrity version. ‘I always say no, because I had such a great experience, and nothing…

Session Three Between our first and second coaching sessions Summer* had experienced a significant shift in her thoughts and feelings about her mum. After a lifetime of being embarrassed by her ‘hippy dippy mother’ she had almost overnight let go of any resentment about her chaotic childhood and for the first time ever, had been able to see her mum with admiration, forgiveness and unconditional love. Summer had left our last coaching session excited about sharing her change of heart with her mum. I had found myself imagining being in her mum’s shoes and wondering how she would respond to Summer’s change of perspective. Summer arrived at our next session looking sad and deflated. ‘What happened?’ I asked gently. Summer was tearful. ‘She didn’t take it well.’ ‘I’m sorry to…

Trying to let go of the drama, and accept things on their own merits is never easy, particularly when we can see things are far from perfect. However, what if striving for perfection — our own brand of perfection, that is — is part of what’s causing us anxiety in the first place? We’re not talking global headlines here, but what if trying to make our relationships perfect, our careers perfect, our lives perfect, and trying to control everything we come into contact with, is only exacerbating the issues we face? ‘I feel like we live in a world that is actually intentionally designed to steal your attention, your time, your energy and your joy,’ says best-selling author and podcaster Mel Robbins. ‘We have turned politics into entertainment, work is…

“I have noticed blossom in the hedgerows when I drive my youngest daughter to school, the roadsides peppered with stars formed from tiny petals. As I continue my ongoing dance between the sea and the city, the trees dotting streets lined with tenement flats are also blooming. Pink confetti will soon fall into my hair and onto the pavements I tread again and again until they almost begin to feel like home. The early months of this year have been defined by two things for me: finishing writing my second book and contemplating a different kind of life for my family. Both seem almost impossible on paper, amongst the challenges of single parenting four children with varying complicated needs in the middle of nowhere. There have been many mornings, accompanied…

As with many mental health difficulties, meditation can be extremely beneficial in reducing symptoms of imposter syndrome. With imposter syndrome, you are trying to let go of the thoughts that you’re a fraud and a fake and you cheated your way to where you are. Meditation and mindfulness can be fundamental in helping to reduce the impact of these thoughts, by getting you out of your mind and into your body. More crucially, they help teach you to trust what your body is telling you, over what your mind is saying. If your body is feeling calm, and you trust what it is telling you, then any ruminating thoughts will begin to lose some of their power as you’ll know that if the calmness in your body is true, then…

Kicking it in the kitchen Busting your moves in a daily kitchen disco can help you reach your exercise targets. Scientists asked 48 people of varying ages and dance abilities to boogie in any style they liked, as if no one was watching, in five-minute bursts, measuring their heart rate and oxygen uptake. Northeastern University academics concluded that four of these stints would be enough to constitute a good day’s exercise in line with the recommended 150 minutes a week. Colour me crazy Bring instant cheer to your home with colour drenching, the hottest interiors trend for spring and summer 2025. The technique usually involves making everything the same colour, from ceiling to skirting boards – and even doors and floorboards. But designers now say it doesn’t have to be…

Perfectionism is one of those terms that gets thrown around too much for my liking. In recent years, it’s become a popular way of describing people who strive to achieve and do their best, in a broadly similar way to how obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is now spoken of. Too often, I hear statements like, ‘Oh, she’s such a perfectionist,’ or, ‘You know how I like things to be exactly right, I’m a bit OCD.’ Incidentally, psychological research has long noted the relatedness of perfectionism and obsessive compulsive disorder. But the point I want to make is that speaking about perfectionism in this way diminishes the very real suffering it can cause individuals. Perfectionism has been linked to many psychological disorders, but for many people like me, it shows up…

“A few weeks ago, I caught myself enjoying the process of completing my tax returns. For years, January had been a month of dread: scattered receipts, last-minute scrambling, a chaotic rush to get everything in order. But over the years something has shifted. Last year, as I sat inputting my receipts, I noticed I was relaxed. Was I actually lost in the moment, taking in the patterns of the numbers populating the screen? They no longer felt like an overwhelming mess. Instead, they had a rhythm, almost like tap dancing on the page. And then it hit me, I was enjoying a task I had always procrastinated over. This wasn’t just about taxes. My past resistance to tasks like these wasn’t about the task itself, it was about the emotional…

The idea of sitting on a mountain doing yoga to take care of yourself when you’re experiencing menopause symptoms is a very tempting one, isn’t it. Those lovely breezes to cool your flushed skin, the calming sound of leaves rustling, maybe a nice lake nearby to go and jump in to when you’re finished; yes, it all sounds rather lovely. But for most of us, the reality is rather different. A new survey of 1,000 women from Kalms Herbal Remedies has revealed the significant toll of fluctuating hormones on peri- and menopausal women’s mental health, with almost three quarters reporting poor emotional well-being in the past year. ● One in four (25%) experience stress and anxiety daily, with over a third (38%) saying these struggles have strained their relationships ●…

For the first time, a streaming show has become the most watched thing on TV. And what a show it is. Adolescence is a devestating portrayal of what can happen when young people are left to navigate the world alone. Many are drawn into the ‘manosphere’, the network of male-dominated online spaces that glorify dominance, emotional suppression, and misogyny. But Adolescence is more than a cautionary tale about the dangers of the internet: it holds a mirror to society today — the overwhelm, the anxiety, the blurred boundaries between guidance and pressure. One of the most powerful threads in the show was the father’s shame, quietly passed down in moments as everyday as a children’s football match. Because that’s how it happens. Not in big, dramatic moments — but in…