News Articles & Podcasts
Where we explore good mental health, resilience and how we can all thrive.
Looking at life from all angles, if you would like to know more about anything we discuss, please get in touch.
Jun 28th, 2021
We are This Can Happen 2021 Award Winners
This Can Happen is an organisation that supports employers and employees across the world to create a positive environment for good mental health in the workplace. Their services provide effective solutions, including their popular 12-month rolling Friends programmes, to support employees’ mental health – suitable for businesses of every size across the globe.
Jun 28th, 2021
General Medical Council
A recent survey for Mind reported that just 11% of people would speak to their manager about their mental health (Pulse Survey April 2020). The GMC reports 85% and this is recognised as largely due to their long-term partnership with Petros.
Jun 01st, 2021
Good Mental Health Costs Less
We deliver training for the UK justice system, supporting staff and managers whose roles put them into challenging and often potentially traumatic situations every day. Giving them the tools to be psychologically and emotionally prepared for these encounters is essential.
Feb 10th, 2021
Spotting the Elephant in Your Wellbeing Room
In an average week I was regularly spending up to 20 hours on a train, add to that the commute to and from the station, the very early starts, very late finishes, delays, cancellations, diversions, lack of seats and refreshments, and you can see how this would negatively impact my wellbeing.
Jan 11th, 2021
How to Be Kind To Your Mind
Did you know that there are nearly 200 phrases in the English language that include the word “mind”? From changing your mind and being absent minded to making up your mind and being mindful, right through to going out of your mind, or even losing it! It makes me think about how busy our minds actually are; being changed, absent, made up, full, or even lost. It’s no wonder we can sometimes feel overwhelmed.
May 22nd, 2020
When was the last time you were honest with yourself?
I am sitting in my bath crying. I’m not dirty, I had already had a shower earlier that day but, mentally, I needed the space. The bathroom is the only space during lockdown which allows me privacy.
May 22nd, 2020
Playfulness and Being Present
When I say play, I am covering the whole spectrum of creativity including making art, gardening, writing poetry or stories, sculpting with clay or bread dough, inventing new recipes and devising new ways of staying in touch with people we love and miss without breaking lockdown. Playfulness is essentially a state of mind so we can be playful even when undertaking an everyday task. Play is about being in the process rather than focusing on the end product and so, in that respect, play brings us into the present moment.
May 11th, 2020
Tips for Working from Home
Many of us may be familiar with working from home, but no-one has ever had to work from home during a global health crisis and in such numbers. All of us have had to adapt to new ways of doing our jobs; for some that adaptation has been fairly straight forward, for others it has been more of a challenge...
May 05th, 2020
Calming our unfounded fears
I have two daughters. Both in their 20s, my eldest is safely ensconced in her house share with three friends. My youngest is far away, adrift on the Caribbean, aboard a ship that cannot dock.
Apr 29th, 2020
The survivor tree & me
There are many trees planted around the site, but this one is special; special, because this tree somehow managed to survive the catastrophic attack on the World Trade Centre in 2001.
Apr 20th, 2020
Everyone’s a critic
Most of us don’t like being criticised. Our common responses include throwing up our defences, attacking back, or crumpling in a mental heap! Forced, as many of us currently are, to live and work, closeted 24/7 with partners, children, in-laws or flat mates, I am willing to bet that none of us can escape the immortal line: “I wouldn’t do it like that…”, or worse.
Mar 23rd, 2020
Resilience
You may be forgiven for thinking the term ‘resilience’ has psychological roots, but, in fact, it originates from engineering and is centuries old. So, for humans, what do we mean by resilience and it’s good to know that we’ve all got what it takes.
Mar 23rd, 2020
Then don’t worry
Just to help us keep our psychological balance during unique and uncertain times.
Mar 20th, 2020
· For there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so….
You don’t have to look too hard to find wisdom! This is one of my favourite quotes because it reminds me of the impact our thinking has on how we feel. And nearly everything we “think” is actually just a story we’re telling ourselves – a story of our own invention, which can, therefore, change. And that is actually very empowering!
Jan 24th, 2020
Reality not relentless positivity Me, myself & I
I’ve never really been a fan of “looking on the bright side”! Don’t get me wrong, I am one of life’s eternal optimists, but for some people I work with, life really is shit, and suggesting they count their blessings, or think of three things they’re grateful for, seems belittling of their situation and, quite frankly, quite insulting.
Jun 21st, 2019
High Risk Roles, High Stakes for Mental Health
Some jobs involve a higher risk of exposure to emotionally, psychologically and physically demanding events than others and these roles often require managing the challenging behaviour of others.
What is Psychological Fitness
Twenty twenty-three has, quite frankly, been shite! Things started to go badly in January and declined thereafter, right through to December. I list the events not for sympathy or compassion (although both are most welcome), but for illustrative purposes only.
Detachment: Talk to the Person, Not the Role
After workload and non-work related issues, the third most commonly cited source of work related stress is management style. This rather horrifying statistic was presented at a recent Policy UK workshop on Mental Health in the Work Place, by Rachel Suff, a senior advisor for the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD).
Working in a Culture of Fear
“What would you do if you weren’t afraid?”, so asked Sheryl Sandberg, a leader over at Facebook, she is clearly a formidable woman (her Wikipedia entry is awesome). And her quote above posses an equally formidable question, at least from the perspective of a psychologist like me, and that’s, “Afraid of What?”
Delivering Difficult News
A few weeks ago, I fell of my horse and fractured my spine. A compression fracture of one vertebra, but a fractured spine nonetheless. It wasn’t a dramatic fall; my horse did nothing wrong, no psychological trauma, just the embarrassment of looking like a total novice despite 54 years in the saddle...