Have you ever been watching a film, reading a book, or even playing a computer game and found yourself moved to tears? Or generally worried about the well-being of one of your favourite characters? Do you have a fictional role model? Or do you see …
The human brain is a highly complex piece of organic machinery and explaining and understanding it can sometimes take a lot of work. Thus, we are constantly looking for ways to explain it more simply and one of the most common analogies we will use to this end is that of a computer. Many aspects …
Have you ever had a friend who suddenly upped their game in terms of the way they dressed? When that happens, it can completely change the way you perceive them and you’ll likely notice that they change in other ways too – they become more confident for example and they probably start to get more …
Introducing your parents to your friends for the first time can be an awkward and nerve-wracking experience. Introducing any new people for the first time can feel awkward enough but in this situation it will likely be important to you that everyone gets on. Friends and parents can feel worlds apart too, so it can …
Numbness and loss of pleasure are now recognized as core symptoms of depression. A general loss of pleasure in life, or ‘anhedonia’ as psychiatrists call it, can be frightening and disturbing. Victims of this condition often say they would rather feel intensely sad and spend all day in tears than live in what they frequently …
First I’d like to set something straight: there is no such thing as a subconscious. This is a term used constantly, even by psychologists, but actually it’s a misnomer at best. Freud, who first postulated that there may be things going on in our brain that we aren’t aware of, originally described ‘unconscious’ thoughts not …
For most of us, the idea that we form our reality for ourselves has to be accepted gradually. Such a concept contradicts most of the basic “assumptions of life” that we’ve learned in the course of growing up. The heart of any kind of inner work revolves around learning to create our reality consciously. The …
When Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin announced that they were “consciously uncoupling” but remained good friends, it was greeted with much sniggering and ridicule. Yet, however irritating the phrase may have been, such a calm, even affectionate, divorce is possible. Of course, there are frequently good reasons for anger and hatred; abuse, neglect, and infidelity …
If you subscribe to an evolutionary description of human psychology, then you will believe that most of our behavioral traits are actually the result of our evolutionary history. We are afraid of snakes because they would have eaten us in the wild. We are altruistic because it’s necessary for us to live in groups. And …
Other than just being much tireder, the brains of insomniacs have some marked differences that may shed a little light on what’s happening and potentially how their condition can be treated. By understanding what’s going on inside the brains of insomniacs we can maybe better understand why they struggle to get to sleep and how …
