Practices

Allergies turn up more often alongside ADHD than chance would predict. Worth mentioning your allergy history at an assessment even when nobody asks, since the two seem to travel together.

The likeliest explanation is not that one causes the other. It is that some of the same underlying wiring makes both more likely in the same person.…

Some foods are formulated to be hard to stop eating. That is a design brief rather than a flaw in you, and it goes some way to explaining why one particular snack is the one you think about at eleven at night.

Knowing this moves the fight somewhere you can win it. Willpower at the moment of craving is a poor bet, and a decision made in the shop is a much…

Even where a herb has good evidence behind it, that evidence belongs to the plant and not to the bottle in your hand. Testing keeps turning up products that do not contain what the label says.

This part of the argument does not depend on whether herbal remedies work. You could accept every claim made for a plant and still be left with the…

Own brand products from large retailers were among the worst performers in these tests. A big name on the packet is not a quality check, however much it feels like one.

Own label goods are usually made under contract on thin margins with no independent verification of what comes out the other end. So the reassurance…

People often turn to herbal remedies hoping to avoid side effects. Plants are chemistry too, and some of them interact with prescribed medication in ways that matter.

A plant extract is not one substance, it is a mixture of many, which gives it more places to interact rather than fewer. Origin has nothing to do…

Your gut is not just plumbing. It makes many of the same chemicals your brain runs on and it is in constant conversation with your nervous system, which is part of why a bad stretch of digestion and a low mood so often turn up together.

If your stomach has been unsettled for weeks and your mood has slid over the same weeks, you do not have to work out which one is the real problem.…

When you find yourself reaching for something sweet again, try asking what the reaching is doing for you instead of telling yourself off. Comfort, a small rebellion, a way to stay awake: the answer usually points somewhere useful.

Talk about being good or bad closes the conversation down. Curiosity keeps it open, and it tends to surface the actual job the food is doing, which…

Put a rubber band round your water bottle for each refill you want to get through today, and slide one off each time you finish it. Nothing to remember, nothing to buy, and you can see where you are at a glance.

Tracking anything in your head is hard when your head is already full, and harder still when concentration is one of the things that has taken a hit.…

Every feeling comes with something it wants you to do. Catching the move before you make it is most of the skill.

Anger wants to push, fear wants to get out of the room, sadness wants to curl up, shame wants to disappear. None of that is wrong, and the trouble is…

You do not need a long list of feeling words. Half a dozen you can actually reach for under pressure will do more than forty you have to look up.

Angry, sad, afraid, ashamed, surprised, glad is enough to start with, and most hard moments are some mixture of the first four. The aim is not to…

When you are already angry, imagining your way into someone else's head asks the tired part of you to do the heavy lifting. Start with your body instead: look at their face, let your breathing and your shoulders come closer to theirs.

Perspective taking is a fine skill on a calm day. In the middle of a row it tends to slide into arguing with a version of the other person you have…

If you can do a cutting impression of someone, you already own the machinery for empathy. It is the same copying, pointed somewhere else.

People who get angry often are usually sharp readers of other people. They catch the tone, the face, the walk, and can play it back exactly. Try that…

Find a photograph of someone caught unguarded, ashamed or frightened or relieved, and look at it for a while. Notice what happens in your chest and around your own eyes.

Most of the time we glance at a face and move straight on. Holding your gaze long enough for something to stir is a small test of whether the feeling…

A good story about the brain is not evidence. Before you pass one on, especially to people who trust you, it is worth knowing whether it happened the way you tell it.

The famous account of how mirror neurons were found gets retold with the wrong animals and with details that could not have happened as described.…

It is tempting to decide that a cruel person simply came without the wiring for feeling. That story is far more confident than the research allows, and it quietly excuses you from seeing them as a person.

Low empathy is real and it does relate to aggression, but it is one strand among several rather than a switch that is on or off. The moment you file…

The real feeling usually crosses someone's face for less than a second before the polite version arrives. If your attention is elsewhere, the polite version is all you will ever meet.

This is why paying attention is not a separate hobby from being kind. They are the same work. Put the phone face down, look up when someone starts…

Arranging your face into a caring expression does not reliably produce the caring. Do not expect the feeling to turn up just because you set the mouth.

The idea that holding a smile makes you happier has had a rough time whenever researchers try to repeat it, so it is not something to promise…

You are allowed to try something because it seems sensible. What you should not do is tell yourself it is proven, because that is what stops you noticing when it does not work for you.

The idea that going without company makes you hungrier for it is a reasonable guess, and mostly still a guess. Keep it in that shape. If a quieter…

A drink does loosen people up, and that is not a reason to use it. Something can work and still be a poor way to get what you want.

This one matters because the reasoning holds right up until the moment it does not. If a thing softens you tonight and charges you tomorrow, it is…

Say it plainly when you do not know. This seems to help and I am not sure why costs you far less than confidence you cannot back up.

People trust someone who marks their own guesses. It keeps you honest with yourself too, because a claim you have labelled a hunch is one you can…