Innehållsförteckning för January 2026 från Psychologies

If you had to choose one picture to represent this last year, what would it be? And would it make you laugh — or cry? I’ve probably taken more pictures this year than in any other. But they’ve almost all stayed tucked away, never to be seen again, in a small silicon chip. I never post them, never share them, I hold those memories close to me. But this next year I’m planning to make them more concrete. I want to print them out so I can hold each one in my hands, surround myself with them on my walls. I want to make them part of my daily life: not just digital clutter to scroll past, but joys to remind us of who we were, and how far we’ve…

Alice arrived for our third and final session with a large sketchbook tucked under her arm. She looked a bit sheepish, but her eyes were bright, and full of anticipation. ‘Do you remember what I said last time about feeling like Alice in Wonderland?’ she asked, placing the sketchbook between us. ‘I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and before I knew it, an idea started to take shape — and colour!’ Alice opened the sketchbook. Illustrated characters filled every page: a vibrant Mad Hatter bursting with ideas, a White Rabbit clutching a clock, a Caterpillar whispering ‘Who are you?’ ‘I’ve started mapping out an illustrated book called A Different Kind of Wonderland,’ she said. ‘It began as a few doodles after I left our last session, but it’s become something…

And yet, behind the slogans and enthusiasm, something quieter hums through so many women’s lives — exhaustion. Not just the kind that a weekend lie-in can fix, but the deep, habitual fatigue that comes from holding everything and everyone together for too long. If that’s you — capable, kind, but quietly worn thin — this year’s most radical resolution might not be another plan to do more. It might be the opposite. A promise to care for yourself before you care for anyone else. Because before you can rebuild confidence or banish brain fog (themes we’ll explore later in this issue), you need a base. And that base is you — but a you who is rested, nourished, rebalanced, resourced. The culture of always doing Wellbeing expert Dr Andy Cope…

Karen Whybrow was only 38 when her husband died. The grief cracked her wide open, but with two young children to care for, life didn’t stop — she had to keep going. ‘I had already suffered from “baby brain” from the haze of sleepless nights and constant responsibility, but my widow’s brain fog was something else entirely,’ explains the now-47-year-old from West Cumbria. ‘It felt like I was walking through heavy mist where everything was slowed down, blurred, and harder to reach. Even the smallest decisions felt impossible. I lost confidence in myself — I couldn’t even trust myself to pay a bill or make the correct meal for dinner,’ she says. You’ve no doubt felt the inner fog descend at some point in your life. From the fuzziness of…

The new year presents us with a chance to wipe the slate clean. Start afresh. There can be a sense of relief at this opportunity to cleanse the palate after what is, for many of us, a period of excess. I usually set myself new targets for my creative work, set the alarm a little earlier and try to inject new vigour into my writing discipline. I clear clutter from my home and take a trip to the charity shop so that the space around me feels lighter and I can breathe more easily. I commit once more to regular exercise, which may have fallen by the wayside, and fill my cupboards with healthy food. More vegetables and herbal tea, less chocolate and wine. My personality can be described as…

In my work as a Feng Shui consultant, I see this often: a home carries the imprint of the people and dynamics that gathered there. If we don’t release or reset that energy it can become draining, often without us realising it. I’ve experienced this myself. In Feng Shui we use the Five Elements to understand spaces and people. I’m a strong Metal energy, so a big part of this means I love planning, hosting, and creating something special for Christmas. But each year I noticed a pattern: once everyone had gone home, I felt depleted and out of sorts. I realised it was my system responding to the energetic demands of having so many people in my space. The ‘sanctuary’ of my home was disrupted, and that had a…

Freeze! Hypnosis beats the heat of menopause Sessions cut hot flushes by half — offering a safe hormone- and drug-free option Forget fans and stripping off — hypnosis could help women struggling with menopausal hot flushes. A study by Bayler University in Texas found spending 20 minutes a day listening to recorded hypnosis, in which women were encouraged to picture scenes where they feel cool, reduced symptoms such as sudden warmth, sweating or heart palpitations by more than half within six weeks. The trial involved 250 women who had at least four hot flushes a day. They were split into two groups, with one group listening to hypnotic relaxation techniques, while the other listened to white noise as a control, designed to mimic the active procedure being tested. The first…

My dad loved to fix things — old telephones, electrical relics, and, excitingly, a machine designed to dispense tablets of Cadbury chocolate for just two pence. Items regularly entered the home with the promise and potential to be made shiny and new. But most never made that hallowed transformation. Granted, some items were sold. But many more lay stagnant, in the corners and crevices of rooms. These broken objects were intended to be a stepping stone between our real life and an imagined richer one. Instead, they hogged the space and clogged the energy. Emotional clutter is much like this kind of physical clutter. You can think that it’s helping you achieve your goals. But it hinders your growth and development. You keep striving and accumulating as you get used…

For years, I thought confidence lived in the mind — a posture, a mindset, a story you told yourself. Then my body began to change, and the story slipped. It started subtly. Jeans that once sat comfortably began to feel alien. My skin grew unpredictable; my energy, uneven. Sleep fractured. My moods, once fairly easy to track, grew tidal. At first, I blamed stress, then diet, then age. But beneath those explanations was something else: a quiet shock at feeling somehow foreign inside my own skin. The body I’d always relied on suddenly seemed untrustworthy. Dr Naomi Potter, menopause specialist and founder of Menopause Care, tells me this sense of bodily estrangement is one of the most common reasons women describe a sudden collapse in confidence. ‘When hormones go awry…

A few weeks ago, I thought that confidence was something I needed to get back — a possession I’d misplaced somewhere between work deadlines and hormonal chaos. But somewhere in the quiet, something has shifted. I’ve stopped hunting for the old version of myself and started listening for the current one. There’s relief in that. The usual pressure to begin again — to be shinier, fitter, more productive — has softened into something gentler: the desire to belong to my own life again. ‘Confidence isn’t about becoming a new you. It’s about remembering you’re already enough,’ agrees GP-turned-executive coach Dr Claire Kaye. ‘We mistake confidence for achievement, but it’s really about self-trust. The moment you stop waiting for external validation and start backing your own instincts, everything changes.’ It’s the…

With growing awareness of the potential side effects of prescription drugs, more people are turning to herbal remedies. Many women in midlife, in particular, are choosing gentler, more holistic options when dealing with emotional and psychological issues. A recent UK survey revealed that 80% used medicinal plants for health, with 51% feeling herbs were safer and had fewer side effects than pharmaceuticals. ‘Midlife is often a time of reassessment, where priorities shift from external achievement to internal wellbeing,’ says clinical psychologist Dr Sheena Kumar. ‘Women in midlife tend to value balance, emotional stability, and self-compassion more than productivity. Stressors like caregiving, hormonal shifts, and loss, combined with a desire for authenticity, often lead to a need for greater emotional regulation and alignment.’ The psychology of ritual The winter months naturally…

It’s a word we use to shrink our edges, a reflex shaped by habit, fear, or the underlying guilt of putting our own needs first. Somewhere along the way, ‘sorry’ became a cushion between us and the world, a way to keep the peace, avoid conflict, or make ourselves easier to like. But what if you stopped apologising for your choices? What if ‘sorry’ became ‘thank you for understanding’, or simply, ‘this is what works for me’? If that idea feels uncomfortable, you’re not alone. Many of us were raised to think that being polite means side-lining our own needs. We learn early on that it feels safer to smooth things over than to stand our ground. Saying ‘sorry’ when we’ve done nothing wrong becomes second nature, a way of…

Mornings have always been a struggle for me. For as long as I can remember I’ve been a snooze button-hitting, grumpy, slow-paced, decidedly non-morning person. I was also never really a breakfast person, especially in my teens and early 20s. When I decided to give running in the morning a try, I realised my body needed fuel very shortly after my a.m. jog around the park. With a few missteps along the way, I started coming up with nourishing, balanced breakfasts to keep me going, and once breakfast was reinstated as a part of my routine, I’ve never looked back. Since then, porridge has been a beloved go-to meal for me. I use the word porridge (instead of the American oatmeal) to describe these breakfasts because they go way beyond…

‘It’s so much easier to spot everyone else’s neuroses than your own.’ On a bright, cold morning, Philippa Perry appears on my computer screen with the easy humour of someone who has done this dance — a journalist, a camera, impertinent questions — a thousand times before. Yet, if you call her ‘the nation’s therapist,’ she all but winces. ‘Well, that might be what other people think,’ she says, waving the label away as though brushing crumbs from a table. ‘I just see myself as an ordinary psychotherapist. I really do.’ It’s quite the understatement. Perry has spent decades translating the complexities of human behaviour into the warm, witty, accessible voice in her columns, bestselling books, viral videos, and now a fast-growing Substack community. Her reach is enormous; her tone,…

As a former expat, I lived through six winters in Norway. The second one was when I’d just given birth to my daughter. It was a manageable zero degrees that day, but by the next week, it had dropped to minus 10. My midwife told me to get out and walk with my baby, and I was horrified at the thought of steering a pram on icy roads and freezing my milk supply. I’d moved to Oslo from London for love, after marrying a Norwegian man. I naively thought I’d take all the best bits of my London life and plant them somewhere new. That didn’t happen. And each winter seemed to echo the death of a part of myself. Three years later, when the temperature dipped to minus 20,…

Ballet season is here, and last night I had the gift of watching Swan Lake, performed by the Grand International Classic Ballet, who visited Lausanne, near where I live in Switzerland. It was a hauntingly beautiful performance, and it stirred something deep inside me. As I sat in the velvet-dark theatre with my daughter, watching the dancers move with both fragility and force, one truth became crystal clear: this wasn’t just a ballet. It was a mirror. A metaphor for what it means to live inside systems that don’t always see our full truth — and to still find a way to stay connected to ourselves. As a team coach, currently completing my training, it was a particularly helpful space for reflection. Coaching asks us to hold presence and truth…

As we speeded towards the end of the year, I felt spent. My body wouldn’t lie: a quiet tremor behind the eyes, a slight twitch in my lip, small signals and clues. I needed rest. And just as nature slows in winter, perhaps we are meant to slow down too. Rest invites reflection. One morning I reached for a book I’ve had for several years — Slow Writing by Louise DeSalvo. The title alone felt like a nod from the universe. How could I, someone who makes a life through words, embrace a slower rhythm, especially when feeling so frayed? To begin this new year, I invite you to explore with me how slow writing can become both an inner practice and an outer rhythm, a way to reconnect with…

There’s a quiet inventory that tends to happen around this time of year. You look around at the life you’ve built — the career, the relationships, the routine — and wonder, Is this what I was made for? For some, the answer is comforting; for others, it’s complicated. You can love your life and still feel misplaced within it. You can tick every external box and still wake up at three in the morning with the uneasy sense that something vital has gone missing — a kind of internal permission to want more, or want something different. When I speak to executive coach Dr Claire Kaye, she tells me something that stays with me. ‘Confidence is not a personality trait, it’s a trainable skill.’ She explains that for many women,…

1 You feel good about yourself if you do something ♥ Challenging♦ Useful♣ Scary♠ Impressive 2 After reaching a goal, you’re most likely to think ♠ Others have achieved so much more♥ What’s next?♦ It was probably just luck♣ What if I can’t keep this up? 3 At times you wonder if you ♥ Care too much♦ Think too much♣ Worry too much♠ Compare too much 4 People would be surprised to know you ♥ Never feel like you’ve done enough♦ Cringe when people say nice things about you♣ Spend hours imagining things going wrong♠ Constantly compare yourself to others 5 When you’re feeling confident, you know it’s okay to ♦ Do your own thing♠ Do things differently♥ Do much less♣ Do things in your own time 6 Your inner…

We’re living in a world that feels increasingly unpredictable, and for children, that uncertainty can feel magnified. From safety drills at school to social media pressures, today’s young people are growing up in an emotional landscape that can sometimes feel overwhelming. Nirvisha Purohit works with both adults and young people around resilience. An NLP Master Practitioner and executive coach, she says: ‘While adults can draw on lived experience to interpret uncertainty, children are still building their internal map of the world. That means every new challenge, whether it’s a changing routine, or distressing news, can shape how they view safety, control, and possibility.’ I ask her why adults are more resilient, and she shares that the biggest difference is that adults have the benefit of perspective. ‘We’ve experienced change, loss,…