2023 · 28. December 2023
If you’re a socially anxious person, you might dread the idea of socialising, and cope with this anxiety by engaging in what CBT researchers call safety behaviours. Such behaviours - foe example, excessively rehearsing what you will say to a person, avoiding eye contact, wearing cool clothes to avoid blushing - are designed to manage anxiety-provoking situations. It's an understandable strategy, but safety behaviours are not a good idea. My latest column explains why.
2022 · 16. December 2022
Treating anxiety can be reduced to one simple principle: ‘Anxiety is maintained by avoidance, and willing exposure is the active ingredient of recovery. That is essential; all the rest is commentary.’ My latest Southern Star column explores why tackling anxiety means tackling avoidance.
2021 · 04. November 2021
I recently talked about exposure therapy and the importance of facing your fears. But what if you fear the thought of relaxing and being 'too happy'? One way of changing this mindset is by devising what I call emotional exposures. This article explores the aim of these emotional exposures: to drop that guard, to give give yourself permission to hope and be happy.
2021 · 21. October 2021
The best way of overcoming your fears is to confront them. Exposure therapy – exposure and response prevention or ERP, to use the proper name – is a proven psychological treatment for all forms of anxiety, but how exactly does it work?
2021 · 09. September 2021
Excessive checking, excessive preparation, organising and planning, writing long to-do lists, spending excessive time editing short emails, ruminating on things you could have done better – my third column in a three-part series on perfectionism offers advice on how to tackle perfectionist behaviours.
2021 · 29. July 2021
Exposure to certain pathogens when you're young can help build immunity to them in later life. It's the same thing with mental health – exposure to feared situations and to discomfort in general will build up your immunity to those same forces. Put differently, too much safety can be dangerous; the biggest risk you can take is to try and live a risk-free life.
2020 · 05. March 2020
Animal phobias – of dogs, cats, spiders, and so on – are common in children and sometimes persist into adulthood. My column in last week's Southern Star explained the CBT treatment of animal phobias; how the bulk of this work is done in a single extended exposure session lasting up to three hours; and mentioned some reading for people interested in trying a DIY approach.
2018 · 26. July 2018
Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) can be painfully debilitating. It's important to understand OCD rather than making ill-informed jokes about it, as I explained in last week's Southern Star. Organised people often laugh about how they’re “so OCD” in their ways, but obsessive compulsive disorder is no joking matter. Earlier this year, reality TV star Khloe Kardashian was criticised by mental health campaigners after she launched KHLO-C-D Week, a series of posts documenting ‘tips and...