“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
- The Second Coming, W.B.Yeats

For many people reading this post, particularly those [...]

One of the many great things about small children is that they’re rarely afraid to question authority. Many of them are quite happy to repeatedly ask the simple question ‘Why?’ in response to almost anything they’re told and any answer they’re given.
Naturally enough most parents will pretty soon discourage them from this habit, but that [...]

January is a month that usually sends coaches, therapists and assorted psychological helpers into a frenzy as the world naturally turns its attention to their sphere of expertise. You might expect that I too will be giving you one dozen practical tips to make sure your resolutions last past February.
Instead though, I’m going to prompt [...]

“God rest you merry, gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay,
For Jesus Christ our Saviour
Was born upon this day,
To save us all from Satan’s power
When we were gone astray:

O tidings of comfort and joy,
comfort and joy,
O tidings of comfort and joy.”

- God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen English Traditional
(You may wish to sample my preferred bluegrass version.)

It is, inescapably, Christmas and [...]

The idea that I don’t think of myself as an alternative therapist may seem curious to some of you, but it’s a label I’ve always rejected and a label I believe that does serious harm to the ability of the public to get good healthcare.
‘Alternative’ therapy – or alternative medicine, or complimentary medicine – is [...]

You know, there are those cynics who would say that positive thinking and self-development are a lot of abstract, huggy-feely nonsense used only by people like Gareth Cheeseman.
The U.S. Army wouldn’t appear to agree.
It is arranging for its soldiers to undergo mental toughness training or ‘resiliency’. No, not with him, but with Martin Seligman, familiar [...]

I think it’s worth talking about this story from the Scottish Daily Record.
A male nurse, Ian Balsillie, working in a call centre in Fife is facing a tribunal to decide whether he should be struck off. He is alleged to have attempted to hypnotise two women referred to him before groping them. The headline is [...]

Who needs to change? Well, the American Psychological Association seems pretty clear – reparitive therapy doesn’t work, and the APA’s members should not tell their clients that it does. Reparitive therapy is an idea espoused by a small, vociferous group of American therapists who claim that gay people can change their sexual preferences through [...]

So, a little while back I encouraged you to get involved with Prof. Richard Wiseman’s experiment to determine whether any of four simple exercises would actually increase your happiness. Now, the experiment is complete and there are some provisional results available.
This is exciting stuff to me – 26,000 people took part and they discovered that [...]

Here’s a remarkable thing – a recent study showed that among nearly 100,000 women, the optimists had a 9% lower chance of developing heart disease and a 14% lower chance of dying from any cause than the pessimists over an 8 year period.
Even after eliminating other factors such as the fact that optimists generally are [...]