I instead define motivation is knowing your ‘why’. Most people don’t enjoy studying for years on end, or every exercise sessions, or visiting the dentist for a procedure. Yet we do this, because our ‘why’ is strong. You may know your health is important or want a stable career.

If you’re surrounded by people who subscribe to a particular set of beliefs about how you should think, feeling and behave, it can be very hard to even know what your authentic self is. This sets of beliefs imposed on you may be shaped by culture, religion, age, education systems and gender beliefs.

Underneath a lot of inner criticism and anxiety disorders is often an underlying lack of trust in yourself, your decision making and your ability to cope if things go wrong. Trust your ability to cope when things go wrong. This is something that gets easier the more you go through in life. Of course, we all hope we will go through as minimal hardship as possible in life, but no one avoids difficult situations completely. You have coped with so much in life, and will cope with whatever is thrown at you.

With most people staying in the workforce for around 45 years, it’s really normal (and understandable!) that you may reach a point where you are unsure what you want to do in your life. In fact, research shows people tend to go through 3-7 career changes over the lifespan! Keep a diary for two weeks. Write down sparks joy and what snuffs out your joy. Think about books, topics, events, people, jobs, conversations, times of day and activities.

A key component of ADHD is suffering from executive functioning difficulties. This involves your ability to initiate tasks, plan, organise and time manage. People with ADHD often compensate for their executive functioning difficulties by overusing their limbic system (which controls emotions and memory). Example: Using anxious thoughts on a task as motivation. It’s like gasoline on a flame where you use a wicked wave of fear and anxiety to push yourself to act.

Think about all the things you do in your bed. Do you eat, read, work, go online, speak on the phone to people, read in bed, worry or lie there awake at night not being able to sleep? What that means is when you go to bed your brain associates your bed with a lot of daytime activities or difficulty sleeping. This dilutes the response between ‘seen my bed, sleep’.

You may be wondering why you can’t find a list of the best psychologists in Sydney, or things like testimonies or reviews, ads in magazines or even someone saying they are expert in a particular presentation, like you would with other professions.

A clinical psychologist is an allied health professional who has completed 6 years of training, including a Master of Clinical Psychology, and then completed two years as a clinical registrar (post graduate supervised practice). They are registered through Australian Health Practitioner Agency (AHPRA).

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is more than being neat or loving things being clean. It can be a debilitating disorder where you fear things like contamination, fear that you may hurt someone or fear you’re a bad person.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is when a person has chronic obsessions (thoughts, images, fears) and engages in compulsions (mental or behavioural) to reduce the anxiety these obsessions cause.

A lot of traditional advice for procrastination online is based on the assumption that people are completely unable to do work and need strategies to get started on their projects.

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.