Why do we have Halloween? It’s time to carve and light the pumpkins, don the fangs and liberally drizzle the fake blood! Halloween is the time to revel in the darkness and delight in savage, gruesome and thrilling. Of course, this is particularly exciting for many of us precisely because we feel under a certain amount of social pressure from society to hide the less palatable sides of ourselves – our anger, envy, jealousy, greed; our raw ‘animal’ sides. But for a long time, psychology has recognised that not only […]...
First we will explore why making important decisions can be difficult and the psychological qualities that are necessary if we are to be decisive when under stress. Making good decisions, especially important ones is often anxiety provoking and paradoxically this anxiety makes a decision harder to come to. Making a decision results in a change of some sort, usually swapping what is familiar with what is unfamiliar, meaning that most decisions require a bit of a leap of faith because ultimately we can only guess at what the future holds […]...
In this blog we highlight and explore the psychological characteristics that are necessary to allow us to embrace the ageing process and that protect us from problems such as anxiety, panic and depression later on in life. On a day to day basis we seem to be reasonably skilled at avoiding the reality of our mortality, if we weren’t we probably wouldn’t leave the house and certainly wouldn’t get in a car. There are some people who struggle with such day to day tasks (for example those suffering from anxiety […]...
We have evolved to feel, therefore our emotions must serve a function, one intended to enhance our chances of survival. If we can understand a little more about why we experience certain emotions it better places us to tolerate and respond to them in ways that improve our lives, rather than feeling overwhelmed by them and responding in ways that don’t. Emotions enable us to navigate through life In essence it would seem that the function of emotions is to enable us to navigate through life, getting our needs met […]...
