Welcome to my blog

Welcome to my blog. In truth I've written that a few times over my life. I've started and abandoned a number of blogs in my time. I'm probably not alone in that fact. Will this time be different? I don't know. All I know is that this time I have a project that I suspect …

I’ve reached peak project as indicated by worry procrastination

I recently spent some time updating content on this website. I wanted to provide basic descriptions of the main things that I am involved with. Whilst it was primarily an exercise in updating my website, it did highlight the number of things I am doing at the moment. I've always been a 'project' person. I …

Balancing acceptance and change

This post also appears on the Student Health and Wellbeing Blog that I manage as part of my day job. I sit in the wellbeing and mental health space.  This means I spend the bulk of my work time learning about how to enhance one’s wellbeing and mental health and then trying to teach what …

What is guiding you when you try to help people?

This one goes out to psychologists and other mental health professionals who are actively trying to improve the lives of others. When you think about the people you help, is there an overarching model that you are following? I was trained, both clinically and as a researcher, to base my practice around robust (i.e. evidence-based) …

Note your victories

I’ve given quite a few presentations these last couple of weeks - all to university students (as part of my job).  A consistent suggestion I’ve given in those presentations is to document one’s victories as a mild antidote against the common tendency to focus on one’s failings.  So I thought I’d try and do that …

Duality

Life seems replete with examples of duality- night/day, life/death, hunger/satiety, husband/wife. Our perceptions also seem to mirror that - right/wrong, smart/stupid, success/failure, love/hate, courage/coward, leave/stay. It can be easy to get trapped by some of these dualities.  For example, it can sometimes be conceptually easier to cling to one side of a duality (i.e. think …

Do we need to sell mental health?

Next week we release our mental health focused campaign at Flinders called The Good Vibes Experiment. I’ll post on it once it is all up and running.  A central feature of the campaign is encouraging people to experiment with adding mental health promoting activities to their everyday life.  In the process, we had to think …

Clarification about my goals

This is a relatively brief update but an important one. Over the last few months I’ve noticed a clarity of purpose emerge in my work.  It seems to have been facilitated by a very busy period of work, in which my mind has had to develop some efficiencies and connect projects together in order to …

Mental Fitness Workouts

If you want to improve your physical health, part of what you do is engage in physical workouts. This might be weight training or running or playing sport or gardening or yoga. Basically something that tests and improves some domain of physical functioning: endurance, cardiovascular health, flexibility, strength, speed etc.  Do it regularly and increase …

The benefits of thinking about mental health as a set of interrelated domains

That was a busy week! Although admittedly, the bulk of the week was taken up with preparation for a small conference presentation I gave yesterday (Friday 30/1/21).  I was speaking to physiotherapy educators, the ones who support and coach students through their clinical placements prior to graduation.  The essence of the presentation was how to …

Stress versus Anxiety

I spoke this week to Dietetics students about to head out on their final year of work placements. The focus of the presentation was looking after themselves.  It is common for someone like me (psychologist) or one of my Health, Counselling and Disability Service colleagues to speak to students heading out on placement, because of …