What is happiness and how can we hope to achieve it? That is I suppose one of life's Big Questions and one that we spend most of our lives trying to work out for ourselves! But I think that the work of American Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi who I have…
What makes a life worth living? What do we really need in order to be happy? If you have ever felt completely absorbed in something, you might have been experiencing a mental state that psychologists refer to as a state of flow. Achieving this state can help people feel greater…
Mid-way through January 2021, it's a tough time for all of us and most of us are just about hanging on in there by our fingertips - keeping small, keeping safe and trying to keep up our spirits and those of the people we love (but whom we may well…
How are we coping with the new lockdown restrictions and worries about the pandemic as we go into 2021? Silly question - it's a tough time for all of us and most of us are just about hanging on in there by our fingertips - keeping small, keeping safe and…
On this second day of 2021, we are all very aware of some tough months ahead as we wait for the Covid vaccine to be rolled out in Ireland. We have undergone exceptional levels of stress over the past year and I think most of us feel that our reserves…
This is the second in a series of articles about resilience - specifically about resilience and getting our emotional needs met. What is resilience? Is it something we are born with? How do we achieve it? Why do we need it? In future blogs I’ll also look at some closely…
We are approaching the end of 2020 knowing we will have a different Christmas and New Year experience to past ones. And when we look ahead to 2021 we can have a sense of optimism now that a vaccine is becoming available - but also a sense of uncertainty and…
The Covid 19 pandemic has affected all of us in many ways. We don't yet know what Christmas will look like, and although although we now have the welcome news that vaccines will become available, we don't know when and we don't know what is in store for us in…
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. —Victor Frankl. This is the third of three blogs about uncertainty - this one focusing on strategies for managing uncertainty. As human beings, we crave security - having a sense of control over ourselves,…
Reduce Stress by Managing Uncertainty When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. —Victor Frankl This blog looks at ways we can reduce stress by managing uncertainty. As I wrote in my previous blog, human beings crave security. We need to have…
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. —Victor Frankl. During 2020, managing change and uncertainty has been a constant challenge for us all. Today we wait for the new lockdown restrictions to be announced in Ireland, and it's hard to keep…
My two previous blogs looked at theories and research into attachment between children and their care-givers over the past 80 years or so. This blog looks at adults and attachment. It was not until the mid-1980's that researchers began to take seriously the possibility that attachment processes may still be…