Nobody talks about the biggest shift you need to make if you talk negatively to yourself. That is to realise that your negative inner voice is often the internalised voice of caregivers. Often you may have needed to believe the negative things they said about you to maintain the connection with them. When you’re 6 years old you can’t just rent out a flat down the road and leave. It’s safer for you to think you are the problem to stay safe.

Pessimism can often feel like cloak of grey has been put over the future. Where you were once hopeful, excited or content in life, when pessimism strikes it can feel like life is never-ending series of painful events. Pessimism often involves the expectation that things will eventually go wrong, be it in work, finances or interpersonal situations.

People procrastinate for many different reasons, but at its core, procrastination is about the inability to tolerate negative emotions or sensations. Humans don’t like to feel bad. If left to our own devices, we are quite hedonistic….we want to feel good and we love instant gratification. And sitting down to do a task can be boring, tedious and hard.

Often we are in the river of our thoughts being tossed around and held hostage to whatever story our brain wants to tell us…sometimes there can be a grain of truth in our thoughts. For instance, if you didn’t get a job interview you may think about that rejection (which did occur), but your brain may tell you stories about why you didn’t get that job e.g. that you aren’t smart, are useless and that things won’t get better

We all have a body clock, known as a Circadian Rhythm. The ‘body clock’ exists in every organ in your body. Every organ, indeed every cell in your body, is on this 24 hours cycle. This includes your stomach, your skin and your muscles. There is a central pacemaker in the brain that they give the feedback to (called the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus).

Insomnia is a normal adaptive response in the short term to the ‘fight or flight mode’. Reduced sleep is designed to help you manage the risks and stress in your life. If your insomnia has only being occurring between 1-4 weeks, there is not need to do anything about it.

A binge often involves eating rapidly, eating until you feel uncomfortably full, eating a large amount of food when not physically hungry and eating alone due to embarrassment or shame.

People-pleasing occurs when we consistently put other people before ourselves. Often people who identify in this way have trouble saying ‘no’ to others, asserting their own opinions, want to avoid conflict at all costs and may put themselves down around others.

Someone with a fixed mindset is very outcome focused. A fixed mindset assumes our intelligence, our athletic abilities and our creative abilities are set. You may feel you shouldn’t do things unless you can do them well, and give up new things easily if you don’t pick them up.

Have you ever had a day off, but at the back of your mind you felt guilty and like you ‘should’ be doing something? Maybe you do something that’s still ‘productive’ like the laundry or getting the groceries done, just to alleviate some of that guilt?