Let’s take sitting exams at school as an example (it’s topical in our house right now and a great example). “Anxiety” is a label your brain has learned to put on sensations that arise within the body. These sensations are completely normal and it’s not surprising for them to come up when thinking about sitting an exam. The intensity of the sensations that your brain labels as “anxiety” is not an indication of how you will perform in the exam, nor of how you will feel in

A while back, I saw a post going around with someone saying they didn’t want to be described as resilient because they wanted to be able to feel vulnerable and break down sometimes and not have to just keep going regardless. My definition of resilience definitely does NOT include not feeling feelings or not stopping when we need to rest or regroup. To me, that sounds like the very opposite of resilience. How about you? As I see it, feelings – all of them, including uncomforta

Have you ever felt like you are somehow different to everyone else and that you aren’t as good at life as other people? These days, there are messages all around us that reinforce that we need to “work hard” to always be happy, and that if we’re not happy pretty much most of the time, there’s something wrong with us, and that we might even have a “mental health issue”. This is such a disempowering message to share with young people. The focus of Mental Health Awareness Week

Because it’s Mental Health Awareness Week, it feels like a good time to share the reason for my blog being very quiet over the last year or so. It’s that I’ve been working really hard on something that helps young people to reconnect with their resilience, confidence and wellbeing. Lots of young people in schools have tried it out now. Their feedback is helping to refine it into an even more useful resource for schools. And this is just the beginning. There’s so much talk abo