Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2025 i Psychologies

It’s the lights that make Christmas for me. Not the sparkle, or the glitter, or the presents, or the food, but the lights. That’s what I most look forward to. Lights on the tree, lights in the windows. Candles, fairy lights, I don’t care, I love them all. One of my favourite tiny pleasures is taking a short detour through our town on the way home after dark, to see the Christmas lights twinkling away on the shops and houses. It reminds me about what Christmas is really about, not the gifts or the perfect pictures or the parties, but light in in the darkness. I hope this magazine helps you to start feeling twinkly. Happy reading.…

Alice burst in to my office for her second coaching session buzzing with energy. ‘I’ve gone from feeling like I was deficient in some way to feeling like I have a super-power!’ ‘That sounds wonderful,’ I said, ‘What you have been doing with your new-found superpower?’ Alice explained that it had taken a while for the impact of her diagnosis to sink in, but it had now shifted to a wonderful journey of discovery. ‘I have been finding out everything I can about what it means to be neurodivergent — reading, listening to podcasts, meeting other neurodivergent people and joining online support groups. ‘Through meeting other neurodivergent people, I can recognise all the strengths we have — creativity, intuition, enthusiasm, ideas, courage.’ Alice scrabbled in her backpack for a piece…

I grew up in Britain in the 1970s, a time of miners’ strikes, power cuts, and dinners eaten by candlelight. Politics was everywhere, even when we didn’t call it that. My parents were working-class immigrants from the Caribbean, deeply principled and vocal about fairness and equality. Yet, curiously, the newspaper on our kitchen table leaned to the right. I often wondered how they could read it so faithfully, from front to back, when its headlines clashed so sharply with what they believed. Looking back, I realise that contradiction shaped me. It taught me that awareness and action come in many forms, from dinner-table debates to handwritten letters to the quiet choices we make about how to live. Those early experiences taught me that politics isn’t just about policies or parties.…

As Christmas approaches, so does the familiar stream of images and posts that flood our social media feeds. The seemingly flawless family gatherings, beautifully decorated homes, and perfectly wrapped gifts are on display, and the pressure to create a ‘perfect’ holiday seems more pervasive than ever. But with every post we scroll past, the question remains: why do we feel like we’re failing when our reality doesn’t measure up to these picture-perfect snapshots? In the age of Instagram and Facebook, the festive season has become a battleground for comparison. While social media allows us to stay connected and share in the joy of the holidays, it also exacerbates feelings of inadequacy and stress. When you’re juggling the demands of the holiday season — shopping, hosting, and family dynamics — the…

“Each morning I walk into the kitchen of my basement flat to make a cup of tea, and turn on the small light that hangs above the table in the corner of the room. I don’t like the glare of the big overhead light — I prefer it when the day creeps in more gently. My kitchen has a long window that overlooks the communal garden. I don’t pull down the blind at night, because I stand at the sink and watch the rectangles of light in neighbouring flats, and the suggestion of trees from the silhouettes that are reflected in the glass. Our days are bookended by darkness now. It is dark when we wake and each afternoon, when I collect two of my daughters from school, the city…

Information is power, but are we being exploited? Fears women are being taken advantage of in ‘menopause gold rush’ Women are at risk of financial exploitation due to a ‘menopause gold rush’, being targeted with advice and products that may not be grounded in evidence. Experts from University College London warned of a ‘rapid expansion’ in unregulated firms and individuals providing information and support ‘for profit’. They surveyed nearly 1,600 women with an average age of 50 and found almost 80% considered themselves ‘somewhat informed’ or ‘not informed’ about menopause. The researchers said while they were ‘heartened’ that menopause education was on the public health agenda after ‘generations of silence, stigma and neglect’, the rapid proliferation of services had left women vulnerable to financial exploitation. ‘There remains a dearth of…

When we experience a loss or change, we move back and forth between two kinds of coping: loss-focused and restoration-focused. Loss-focused moments are when we focus on the pain of what has gone. Restoration-focused moments are when we re-engage with life — managing tasks, making plans or rediscovering small pleasures. Healthy adjustment involves shifting between these two states. Both are necessary and healing. Staying too long in either can be draining. A constant focus on loss can feel overwhelming, while staying only in restoration mode can lead to avoidance. The movement between the two allows balance and recovery. Thinking about a change or loss you have experienced: ● What have you been doing, saying, or thinking that feels loss-focused — remembering, grieving, honouring what’s gone? ● What have you been…

We want Christmas to feel meaningful, calm and connected, yet it often becomes a marathon of logistics and comparison, with joy left trailing somewhere in the distance. So how do we stop struggling to make Christmas perfect and start making it real? Suzy Reading, author of Rest to Reset, suggests starting with a pause. ‘Ask what this season means to you in this particular moment of your life. Do you need rest, reconnection, light-hearted fun? Clarity on purpose makes it easier to say yes with intention, and no without guilt.’ That pause can be as small as a quiet check-in. From there, start with how you want to feel. Before making plans, name three feelings you want to bring into the season. Calm? Connection? Lightness? Let those guide what you…

‘Your nervous system doesn’t ask your permission. It recognises the environment and loads the old settings.’ You feel yourself shrinking — fuming at an off-hand comment, craving approval, or falling into a familiar role you thought you’d long outgrown. Why do families have this power to affect us so much? Clinical psychologist Dr Sophie Mort, mental health expert at Headspace, calls it emotional time travel. ‘The smells, songs, foods, and rooms where we first learned who we were act like keys that open old emotional programmes,’ she explains. ‘Even if you now have a high-powered job and pay a mortgage, a single whiff of your family’s tree or the sound of a parent’s footsteps can cue a younger state — seeking approval, bristling at rules, or slipping into the family…

Whilst it is wonderful to find ourselves in a time of year defined by pleasure, there can also be an unspoken pressure to perform joy, because this is a time that we are told we ought to be feeling happy. Christmas practically yells at us to have fun, after all, and who wouldn’t want to engage in the revelry? But simply put, joy isn’t just for Christmas, so how we can embrace the best bits of that joyful feeling every day? I ask psychotherapist and bestselling author of books including, The Good Decision Diary (Penguin Life, £16.99), Anna Mathur what is it about the festive period that makes it so joyful in the first place, and she shares with me that the season gives us something that psychologists call ‘collective…

It’s a revealing admission. Many politicians might watch a documentary about their own life with a certain pride, or at least curiosity. But Ardern, now 45, is not ‘many politicians’. Her sensitivity — that same quality that made her such a different kind of leader — runs deep. ‘It’s not that I don’t wish to go back,’ she explains, ‘in amongst the tough times, there were also light moments, and there is joy in the memories as well. But there were also some incredibly difficult parts.’ That complexity — light and dark, strength and fragility — defines her. Capturing a life, unplanned The film began as an almost accidental project. Her husband, broadcaster Clarke Gayford, had long been in the business of ‘capturing moments in time’. When Ardern unexpectedly became…

1 When you imagine doing Christmas differently, you feel ♥ Guilty about letting people down ♦ Uncertain how others will react ♣ Worried about being judged ♠ Overwhelmed by the logistics 2 The voice in your head says ♠ But we’ve always done it this way ♥ What if we end up doing nothing? ♦ I don’t want to cause upset ♣ People will think I’m difficult 3 You avoid suggesting changes because ♥ You don’t want to seem selfish ♦ You fear conflict or confrontation ♣ You worry about being misunderstood ♠ It feels easier to just go along 4 When faced with difficult conversations, you typically ♠ Avoid them and hope things work out ♣ Worry excessively beforehand ♦ Try to keep everyone happy ♥ Put others’ feelings before your own 5 Your biggest fear about changing Christmas is ♥ Feeling left out ♦ Stoking family…

It’s that time of year again: fairy lights are twinkling, gifts to buy, parties to attend, arrangements being made to spend quality time with loved ones. But it can also be a time of stress, tiredness, and overwhelm, where emotions run high, energy depletes and stress rises which can take its toll on the body and mind. What if we could learn to practise the power of the pause and thrive through it instead of merely surviving Christmas? Victor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor, said, ‘Between every stimulus and response there is a space.’ This is the space where we can build on our emotional regulation, as it’s where we can apply the power of positive intelligence, our power to choose our responses. Power Pauses with Positive Intelligence Regular pauses help…