Practices

The unkind thoughts tend to arrive in a handful of familiar shapes. One friend is busy so nobody wants you. One bad mark so you are going to fail everything. Someone did not say hello so they must dislike you.

Rather than fighting the content, try naming the shape: that is the all or nothing one, that is the mind reading one. Most people find they only have…

After years of feeling slightly outside every room, pulling back stops being a decision and becomes the setting you live at. Worth knowing about yourself before you conclude that you are simply not a people person.

If you are supporting or treating someone with ADHD, assume the connection has to be built rather than already there, and do not read the flatness…

Setting out to get rid of worry altogether sets you up to fail twice, first at the worry and then at the failing. A kinder aim is to change how you sit with it.

Anxiety and ADHD keep close company, and for most people some background hum does not go away. What can change is what happens next: whether you…

Some of what you believe about yourself is not a distortion. Things really did go wrong, often for years. What can be argued with is the conclusion you drew from them, that this is simply what you are.

Try separating the record from the verdict. The record might be missed deadlines, jobs that ended badly, friendships that faded. The verdict is 'so I…

Fear tends to make its case as caution. Try not to let it quietly shrink what you are willing to attempt, because the shrinking rarely stops on its own.

If you have been criticised often enough, staying out of things stops feeling like a choice and starts feeling like plain good sense. The way back is…

Worry does two things at once. It makes the problem bigger than it is and it makes you smaller than you are. The second half is the one that usually goes unchallenged.

After years of being told you get things wrong, a low estimate of yourself does not feel like a distortion, it feels like the evidence. So argue with…

Sometimes the answer is not a better system. It is doing less, including giving up something you love, because what it costs you has stopped being affordable.

Scouts on a Tuesday, the second job, the committee. Losing one of these is a real loss and it is worth grieving rather than pretending you never…

Connection does not have to be human. A dog will not judge how your week went, and it will get you out of the door twice a day whether you feel like it or not.

If people currently feel exhausting or risky, an animal is often the easiest place to begin. Part of the good is the company and part of it is the…

If you are permanently behind, short of sleep and scrambling, that is not the backdrop to your short fuse. A good deal of the time it is the cause of it.

This is what makes the dull organisational work worth doing, because it buys you something you actually want. A morning that is not a panic leaves…