Sam Akbar

Louise Chunn is a prize-winning journalist and former editor of a number of magazines, including Psychologies, Good Housekeeping and InStyle. She is the founder of Welldoing Ltd.

Louise Chunn

Crying as an expression of deep sadness is common throughout 

for heroes, and Odysseus himself cries on several occasions. There is no ‘boys don’t cry’ in Homeric epics. In fact, it’s more a case of ‘heroes do cry’.

Odysseus isn’t the only one to openly express his emotions. Earlier in the poem we are told that Menelaus, King of Sparta, recalls the hardships of the war and starts to weep. Helen, his famously beautiful wife, drugs their wine with a narcotic called 

(it quite literally means ‘no suffering’); you get the feeling Helen has seen the crying on many occasions before, and is only too aware that many of those in the room will blame her for their suffering.

Is this a good thing? To be so far removed from your pain and rage that you forget everything? That even if those you loved most were killed, you would feel nothing? We certainly do not want the pain, but equally, how many of us would really not have had the love that precedes the loss? Would you choose a life without pain if it meant choosing a life without love? Perhaps, sometimes, yes. Or perhaps you just need some nepenthe. But what happens when nepenthe is a way of life? What happens when you can never show your feelings? What happens when you can never acknowledge vulnerability? What is your version of nepenthe, the thing that blunts the feelings? Drugs, wine, food, social media, zoning out, shutting down? We all have one, and occasionally they are fine, but employ them too frequently at your peril. Your emotional pain tells you something about what matters to you.

Odysseus does not hide his anguish or pretend that he is content in paradise with a beautiful lover sea nymph Capes. He cries on the shore, longing for home and his wife. This is not weakness, nor an inability to cope, but a foundation of genuine strength. He refuses to numb himself – he has no nepenthe anyway – to what he longs for or to convince himself that his desires don’t matter. He cries 

he knows what matters – his wife, his son, his family, his kingdom, his home – and he has none of it.

This is a man who has witnessed the horrors of war, heard the screams of his comrades begging him to save them and is now reduced to tears by homesickness. To our modern eyes, trained to see emotional control as strength, this might look like failure. But Homer shows us that there is nothing more courageous than refusing to lie to yourself about what you feel.

What makes this vulnerability truly powerful is how Odysseus treats himself in his pain. Unlike a modern counterpart, he does not berate himself for his longing or shame himself for his inability to move on and be grateful. There is no harsh internal voice telling him to toughen up, be a man and accept what looks like an enviable life. Instead, he grieves as naturally as he breathes, recognizing that his longing needs an acknowledgement. And all the while he makes room for his sadness, he builds his capacity to tackle what awaits him.

Yet ten years of a harrowing war and another ten years of displacement, have carved deep grooves of mistrust into this man. Traumatic events are wont to disrupt the trust human beings have in other people, themselves and the world. It is safer not to trust than to risk, once more, the excruciating pain of loss. When [sea nymph] Calypso finally offers to help him leave, allowing him to build a raft, Odysseus’ response reveals just how falteringly trust comes after you have been hurt too many times. ‘Goddess,’ he tells her, letting his words fly out at her ‘you have some other scheme in mind, not my safe passage . . . No, goddess, I will not get on a raft, unless you swear to me a mighty oath you are not planning yet more pain for me.’

Even in his desperation to escape, he cannot simply accept her offer. Bitter experience has told him that he cannot really know who to trust any more. There are few more isolated places for the psyche of a human being. A life without trust is a life without connection to another person, the very definition of what it is to feel alone. He may no longer wear his warrior’s armour, but his wariness of being deceived, betrayed and hurt are every bit as strong as any bronze breastplate. He will not give that up easily. Protecting his heart is the one thing he still has control over.

We see this everywhere in our own world. After a relationship ends, where there have been lies and dissembling, we question every new partner’s motives. After a workplace betrayal, we check our colleagues’ words for hidden meanings. After a traumatic event, the prospect of opening up ourselves to desperately needed help can feel impossibly risky. Easier not to try or to hope than to be hurt again.

The path forward requires respecting that caution, for it often comes from a place of protection, while slowly and carefully learning to trust again. As the story progresses, we see how Odysseus slowly reveals his true identity to those he has ascertained he can trust, and that revelation of ‘true self’ is a key theme in 

. He does not blurt out who he is to all and sundry. He watches and waits, and chooses his moment with precision. He fiercely protects his inner core revealing his identity and vulnerability gradually, unpeeling them like the layers of an onion, once he can trust again. For some people, because of some traumas that are so destructive in nature, trust is the hardest thing to regain.

In our own lives, we can mistake invulnerability for strength. We suppress or push away emotions, telling ourselves to be grateful for what we have rather than acknowledging what we truly need. Vulnerability, an admission of our human frailties, does not necessarily exclude or negate grit, resilience and strength, rather they underpin it. Odysseus may well be grateful for the last seven years of his life on a stunning island paradise with an immortal goddess who never ceases to desire him, but it’s not what he truly needs. What he needs is to find a way back to who he really is and to find his way home. That admission, and the acknowledgement of his pain, his vulnerability, is grist to his resilience mill.

reveals to us about real strength: it doesn’t come from emotional numbness or pretending we don’t need what we need. It comes from the courage to feel fully, to acknowledge our suffering with compassion rather than judgement, and so take responsibility ourselves for slowly rebuilding our capacity for connection. Vulnerability is the prerequisite for understanding who you really are, what you really want and what you can really give to others.

The hero’s journey home, whether to Ithaca or to our authentic selves, always leads through the territory of acknowledged pain. It is only by being radically honest with ourselves and treating our struggles with kindness, that we can hope to find a way back to what makes us whole.

In Homer’s Odyssey Real Heroes Show Both Vulnerability and Caution

Kate Graham is a therapist in West Yorkshire; she also works online

Kate Graham

Imagine you are seeing a counsellor because your 

 is getting out of hand. After a few sessions things are starting to ease, but there is still one issue that is really worrying you. Something that makes you feel weird and different and makes you wonder if there is something totally wrong with you. After a few false starts you finally take a deep breath and summon up the courage to ask the therapist if it’s ok to talk about your spiritual beliefs.

It's not easy for many of us to talk about what we believe, whether it’s as a client or a therapist, or supervisee and supervisor. Which is a pity because all the evidence – as well as common sense – suggests that if we talk about our beliefs, our values, how we understand the world, this will help our growth and recovery from whatever we are struggling with. It’s still a taboo for many people, something too personal, that makes us too vulnerable to judgement or persecution.

Why is it so difficult to talk about beliefs?  Even saying the very non-committal “I'm spiritual rather than religious” can seem challenging in some circumstances. If your religious beliefs are important to you and your therapist appears to be entirely secular in their worldview, there can be a real fear that they won’t understand you. When researching my book, several interviewees told me how they feared that a therapist might not grasp what an integral part of their life their faith was, and wouldn’t accept this in the therapy room.

And therapists can be equally fearful. Therapists who have a clear faith (of whatever nature, including 

) may well feel constrained not to show this, so as not to influence, or put off the client. The majority of therapists in the UK, and certainly in the US, are not religious, though may be more or less interested in spirituality. Asking about someone’s faith can seem like venturing out onto thin ice. Will I get it wrong?  Will they expect me to know stuff that I have no idea about? Will I offend them? What if I can’t agree with their beliefs? Will I miss something important about their emotional development? Training courses often don't include spiritual exploration as part of their relational training, yet it is a key part of our relationships with others, with ourselves, and with a sense of something greater than us all.

I want to address these fears and make the whole subject of faith a delightful curiosity to explore as an integral part of deepening the therapeutic relationship. Psychotherapy, like faith, involves exploring inner worlds and facing wildness, uncertainty, and not-knowing. There is more common ground here than standard therapy training may have revealed. As well as offering practical examples and pointers towards good practice, in the book I encourage therapists and anyone interested in therapy to explore their own beliefs, and their relationship to uncertainty and the unexplainable. With the growth of AI and medicalised approaches to therapy I feel there is a real need for the intensely human and often mysterious connection that can emerge in the therapy room (whether online or in-person).

Exploring beliefs brings up tensions between mystery, hope and reason. I have made these into characters who guide us through the book, highlighting the key issue in each chapter, tussling over their differences and frustrations with each other as they search for understanding.

I am fascinated by the mystery of both therapy and faith. I am also intrigued by how our relational needs change as we get older, how experiences of faith might intersect with neurodiversity, and the role hope plays in our work together. I am a Quaker, drawn to contemplation and Sufi mysticism and more recently, shamanic practice. I understand relationships and connection as key to our lives, and this runs through the book: with the natural world, with ourselves, between client and therapist, and with the “wider than human”. I feel that in an increasingly fearful world we need to develop our capacity to act with love and trust and find ways to create bridges over divides. I hope this book will help both client and therapist to find a deeper connection in their work together, to explore what brings meaning and purpose to life, to reflect, and to allow the mystery of the therapeutic process to weave its magic. Writing it has helped me grow and I hope it will help you, the reader, also.

Back in the room, your courage has paid off. The therapist is fine with this. It’s such a relief and out it all tumbles, received with curiosity and validation. Colour has returned to your life and being you becomes just that bit easier again.

Does Faith Have a Place on the Therapy Couch?

Flic Everett

Flic Everett is a well-known features journalist whose work appears in daily newspapers and magazines. For the past five years, writing as 

, she has also been a novelist, most recently writing 

Having grown up in Manchester, she has a grown-up son, and is married for the second time. She now lives with her husband, two dogs and a cat in rural Argyll in Scotland.

But, for all her apparent success she has struggled for all her life with debilitating 

. After much thought and discussion with friends, family and therapists, she decided to be tested for 

. Now 55, she believes her positive diagnosis for a

deficit hyperactivity disorder has changed her life almost overnight.

On Facebook I had noticed that Flic often mentioned what a difference this had made in her life. Recently she wrote, “If you have anxiety, don't dismiss the possibility that it could be ADHD. I have lived with anxiety my entire life. It has been hugely debilitating and in many ways, life ruining. Since I was diagnosed with ADHD and started medication, it has basically gone. It's hard to believe, but it's true. I know how awful it is, and of course, not all anxiety is related to neurodivergence, but if you've tried everything and nothing works, that might be a route worth exploring. It's certainly been life-changing for me.”

 by many mid-life women with similar experiences, and feels there is plenty of room for more information and more encouragement of individuals finding out if ADHD is what is affecting them.

She was happy to record this interview with Welldoing in which we talk about her history of anxiety, the disorganisation and feeling of not understanding the rules to everything from school uniforms to what is expected in the work place. She talks about the effect of ADHD medication, which took away her anxiety virtually overnight.

Finally she encourages others in her position to seriously consider testing for ADHD. “If you know, then you can get help, you can explain to people why you need help with things. I’ve been terrible with maths and money all my life, and it made me feel so blamed and stupid. Now at least I understand why I’ve struggled so much in that area.

“It helps you to recognise who you are, and allows you to see who you might be without all the problems of ADHD. If you find a good therapist, if you take medication, you will have that opportunity. Whereas if you don’t know, you’ll never quite know what it would be like not to have to deal with all the things it brings which, in my opinion, are largely negative.”

An Adult Diagnosis of ADHD Has Changed Flic Everett’s Life

Knowing That She Has ADHD Has Changed Flic Everett’s Life

Gabrielle Rifkind

Stop wanting the other person to be a mind reader

The first step is relinquishing the expectation that the other person will know what you are feeling without you telling them. Open discussion rather than relying on intuition is the answer to greater mutual understanding. It’s not surprising that so many of us find this hard to fully accept, even if we know it rationally. We feel our emotions so strongly that we expect the other person to feel them, too. Articulating them can feel difficult and painful, so we get stuck in wishing that our loved ones could create a breakthrough via their powers of empathy alone. When this doesn’t happen and we become trapped in 

 and disappointment at not being understood, our emotions might prevent us from recognizing that the best solution is to simply tell the other person what we are feeling. This is difficult if we have not learned how to be direct but will serve us better than waiting and hoping for empathy and attunement from the other person. 

Create the right environment and get your timing right

If you need to tell someone about something that is upsetting you, it’s wise to do it in a positive and non-critical way so that they’re more able to hear what you have to say. It will help if you create the right environment and pick the right moment. Choosing when to raise your grievances rather than pouring them out in the heat of the argument makes better outcomes more likely.

When I am frustrated with a member of my family, a friend or a colleague, I might suggest a walk in the park, a quiet meal or a drink in the pub – a new environment where we can reset the earlier tense communication. Sometimes, sitting side by side rather than face to face with the other person can feel less confrontational.

Timing is also crucial. A moment when everyone is not too 

 and not too tired is preferable. Arguments that drag on into the early hours leave everyone depleted and discouraged, and the atmosphere between you darkened. It is almost never wise to talk for more than an hour if the exchange is going badly. Call time and agree to revisit the issue later.

Beginning a difficult conversation is often the hardest part of all, so it’s worth thinking carefully about how to start. You might open with something like, ‘This isn’t an easy conversation, but I’ve been thinking about how to raise some issues I’m struggling with,’ or simply, ‘Are you up for a conversation?’ The exact words are less important than the tone: a gentle beginning conveys both respect and seriousness.

Our impulse is often to launch into our story about the problem, but accusation breeds defensiveness. When someone feels attacked, they stop listening. The conversation closes before it has even begun.

A more fruitful approach is to acknowledge the other person’s position while also expressing your own difficulty. For example, if you feel you are doing all the childcare in the mornings, you might say: ‘I know mornings are hard for you and you often sleep deeply, but it’s difficult for me always being the one who gets up at night. By morning I’m exhausted and I need some help.’ This sensitivity may feel like a lot to ask, but in  finding a voice that is not blaming and attacking, you’re creating the kind of environment where things might change and deliver a better outcome for you.

Our tone of voice conveys our feelings and has an impact on how people react to us. If we sound too angry, agitated or insistent, that will affect people’s capacity to listen to us. A voice that sounds open and enquiring allows words to be digested, rather than defended against by the receiver. We should also be attuned to the nonverbal cues we put out into the world. Simple cues such as eye contact, smiling and hand gestures heavily influence how people interpret what you’re saying and react to you.

If you tend to respond to conflict with anger, try to keep your shoulders and hands open and your body movements measured, avoiding sudden movements or changes of pace in your speech. If you tend to become withdrawn in conflict, try to keep your body open and communicative and physically showing interest. If you are able to hold eye contact comfortably, that will allow the other person to believe you want to connect with them. And, most of the time, a warm smile or a little humour or irony during a moment of tension can break the cycle of conflict and open up the possibility of a different kind of communication.

Allow things to get worse before they get better

Don’t expect everything to be resolved on the first attempt. Things may even get worse if there’s a lot of anger and frustration in the air. But you need not be deterred. It might be a necessary first step. It is common for one party to have thought a lot about how to lower the emotional temperature while the other person is still in the heat of the fire. You may need several conversations and have to weather a tense and uncomfortable period before you find a kinder way to communicate.

 behaviours are particularly challenging to confront because they are often protected by shame and denial. People trapped in such patterns know, at some level, that their behaviour causes damage but facing it will expose them to unbearable 

, or the fear that they will not be able to change, or are unloveable.

5 Conflict-Avoiding Ways to Communicate With Your Partner

Emmy Van Deurzen

Emmy van Deurzen is something of a superstar in the world of therapy. Now in her mid-70s, she is an existential therapist, psychologist, philosopher, and author. Originally from the Netherlands and long-time resident in the UK, she has been a major force in developing existential therapy worldwide.

Having written around 20 books for professionals in the psychology and philosophy space, she has just published her first book for the general public, 

Beginning to Live: The Art of Existential Freedom

. At 400+ pages it is no dip-in, quick fix self-help manual, yet we believe it could greatly help anyone looking for deeper meaning, and greater freedom in their life. We are delighted to call it the Welldoing Book of the Month for May 2026.

Van Deurzen joined a group of Welldoing therapists on a CPD session recently — you can see some of the conversation on the clip below. In a jewel-bright room near the South Coast, bedecked in purple and wearing red lipstick, she is a vibrant presence, and her language is rich with metaphors and examples from clinical work.

The book is structured around four key dimensions of human experience — physical, social, personal, and spiritual. Distilling the work of decades of training, reading, working, she is leading readers towards a view of life that involves choice, agency, and a deep search for meaning.

Here, for example, she is writing about whether taking work too seriously make us forget the need for balance. “Work can become all absorbing because it is about earning a living and survival. This may not leave as much room as you would like for playfulness, relaxation, creativity and human relationships. It is only too easy to disturb that natural balance between effort and rest.” This leads her to Heidegger and his criticism of technology’s ab ility to shut down our bodies and the physical world around us… “The will to mastery becomes all the more urgent the more technology threatens to slip from human control.”

But she is blessedly free of dictates and rules. Again and again she writes, we have choices. It is, after all, existential freedom that she is exhorting us to open ourselves to.

, journalist Sophie McBain interviewed van Deurzen about the book, but then she was offered a session of therapy with her. She described it as “one of the most profound encounters” of her life. “This optimism has persisted. I can see a new way out of my mental doom loops; it seems possible I may, with time and effort, learn a different relationship to risk and uncertainty. I relistened to my interview the day after therapy and when van Deurzen describes courage as “a lightening of the heart” I thought: “That’s it! That’s how this feels!”

Thoughtful, wise, empathetic, these are all words that indicate the type of book this is, not a quick fix, but not a stiff, jargon-filled plod either. Van Deurzen hasn’t finally got a publisher to take on a commercial book about existential therapy to blow it. Written with care but also dynamism and intellect, Beginning to Live is a book that we believe could make some readers look at what they want out of life differently, and with intent.

Book of the Month: Beginning to Live by Emmy van Deurzen

Kate King

Mend or Move On: A Guide to Healing or Leaving Toxic Relationships

The jaws of the “comfort” trap in action: Prioritizing the comfort of others over your own mental health and well-being.

Comfort is the antidote to progress because it keeps you stuck in outdated, possibly unhealthy dynamics with others. For many, the safety of the known present is more appealing than the possible risk of an unknown future born from change. Although the misalignment (or toxicity) of an unhealthy dynamic might not be ideal, at least it’s comfortable, right? Wrong.

When you remain stuck in a relationship that is comfortably numb (thanks for the term, Pink Floyd), the true Self within you goes dormant. You lose touch with joy, your capacity for inspiration, and your drive toward meaning and purpose. When these core elements of your true Self get derailed, resentment builds. It may take time for you to notice the irritability, resignedness, and frustration connected to the flavor of resentment that forms when you self-abandon, but eventually it will combust. Resentment is the alert that arises from deep within that screams, 

 It is a sign that you have drifted too far from the essential Self you were born to be, and your inner system has started to revolt.

Change is hard. It requires effort, intention, and resources. This is why it is often easier to remain unhappily comfortable in a relationship that doesn’t serve you. For many people in circumstances like this, change activates only when they reach an intolerable unhappiness or a complete lack of safety—and even then, as many in the abuse cycle can attest to, breaking out of a familiar and predictable relationship requires immense strength.

Disentangle from the grip of the “comfort” trap: learn about how to regulate your nervous system and get to know the parts of yourself that are involved in perpetuating unhealthy relational patterns.

Human beings choose comfort over courage for many reasons, but one of the most common is living from a dysregulated nervous system due to unhealed trauma. When you live and relate from wounds that perpetuate survival mode, you are more likely to make choices that ensure comfort rather than activate growth. This is because your nervous system is wired for survival, not happiness. If remaining frozen or fawning, yet in a predictable circumstance, seems like the surest way to stay safe, that’s what your nervous system will do. This is why intentional focus on nervous system regulation is necessary to heal patterns related to intrinsic defaults that have wired 

“Parts work” through an Internal Family Systems

lens is helpful for healing and rewiring such pathways because it introduces you to the parts of yourself that revert to unhealthy dynamics in an attempt to keep you safe. The part of you that chooses 

 is an adaptive mechanism of your inner system. Somewhere in time, this part learned through experience that the discomfort brought on by the risk of initiating change isn’t always worth it. Maybe a younger version of yourself got brave, made a major life decision, sacrificed comfort for the risk of a better future, and landed in a heap of trouble. This is how inner safety mechanisms get built upon past experiences in an attempt to predict future safety. Despite the remarkable intelligence of your inner system, sticking with the familiar isn’t always a good plan. Why? Because you’ve come a long way since that early experience shaped your perspective of how to stay safe in an often unpredictable life. You are no longer the young, vulnerable child you were when you built that worldview. You have since grown and evolved into a capable adult who can navigate greater complexity and tolerate disappointment and pain in entirely different ways than your child Self could. Because of this, it is a faulty plan to stick with the fears and blocks your wounded parts insist you abide by. The work of Internal Family Systems therapy teaches you how to unburden and reintegrate the parts of yourself that may be harboring outdated fear and pain so that you can step solidly into the healthiest version of your true Self. We will discuss parts work in more detail in chapter 8.

Avoid repeatedly getting hooked by the “comfort” trap in the future: relate to others from a regulated nervous system where you can connect with authentic vulnerability and honesty, and reintegrate wounded parts of yourself so that you can connect from your true Self.

If you explore and heal what keeps you stuck in the “comfort” trap of toxic relationships, you will be more likely to avoid getting stuck there in the future. Certain personality types are more liable to get ensnared by the “comfort” trap. If this is you, say “I” and pay extra attention when you feel the seductive pull to settle into familiarity and predictability. You know who you are. Challenge yourself to inquire about the state of your nervous system: Are you feeling activated or numb? Do you notice yourself fawning—responding to others in ways you think will make them happy—rather than standing up for yourself or initiating change in a dynamic? Also notice if there is a part of you that wants to cling to things, people, and experiences that feel comfortable. If you have practiced IFS parts work, you may choose to dialogue with this part of yourself and ask what it fears, what it is protecting you from. With greater awareness, and by consciously cultivating courage and bravery, you can step out of the “comfort” trap and into a bright future brimming with hope, possibility, and healthy behaviors.

The Comfort Trap: Why We Stay in Relationships That No Longer Work For Us

India Sturgis

According to the science historian James Gleick, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, we are reaching ‘the biological, psychological and neurological limits of just how much we are capable of doing’. Gleick wrote that in 1999 in Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything, a book about the paradox of technology saving us time but also reducing it and intensifying our sense of haste – and that was years before the arrival of the iPhone, apps and social media.

If we were full-to-the-brim then, I’d dread to think what he thinks about our capacity now. But it is more than can be pinned on technological change alone; it’s become an ingrained state of Western culture where busyness and productivity are essential badges of honour – precious and important – while inactivity and inertia is a pitiable aspersion. How are you? Busy, we say, which is code for excellent and thriving. ‘Downtime’, a phrase that originally referred to the cessation of operations in engineering when tools had to be literally put down to be fixed or for next-phase planning, is now used disparagingly to describe fleeting, guilt-ridden moments of rest.

Consultants and lawyers schedule emails to be sent in the middle of the night to reassure bosses and clients that they are working. Articles list how long they will take to read in minutes so we can decide whether they will slot into our busy day. CEOs and influencers post about rising before dawn to cram yet more into their already heaving schedules. So-called ‘5-to-9 routines’ – completed before or after the regular 9-to-5 workday and an amalgamation of workouts, skincare regimes, cleaning and food preparation (trad wives getting up before dawn to make cereal from scratch) – became a thing online. Yet nothing is more tedious or exhausting than the ceaseless drive to make the most of every second we are given on this planet.

In one Time magazine article a productivity guru advised, ‘If I can save ten seconds on a process that happens ten times per day, that’s a minute and 40 seconds saved per day. Over the course of a year, that’s ten hours saved. If I can find ten similar opportunities, that’s 100 hours saved. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of these opportunities in all our lives.’ Perhaps we could save the time spent reading this sort of ubiquitous ultra-productivity-focused advice and notch up a few weeks of blissful free time. 

Our mental health would benefit from re-examining this blind devotion to speed and busyness. For a while scientists have been preoccupied with the psychological result of leaning into hustle culture. In 1985, American cardiologists Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman coined the term ‘hurry-sickness’ which made links between behaviour patterns and heart disease. Hurry-sickness, as the name suggests, describes an intense sense of time urgency and can feed into disordered feelings of 

. A similar trait is sometimes called joyless striving, typified by being always on-the-go with multiple projects, pushing forwards in a continuous struggle to achieve, get more stuff and be seen. Our always-on culture and the breathless race to produce regular, never-ceasing content in order to maintain an audience has multiplied this ten-fold. It was the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard who said, ‘Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.’

As a species, we have a natural pace. Too often modern life has sped us up to the point of illness and we are preoccupied with numerical time over natural time. How often do you look at a clock to see if you feel tired or hungry rather than feel it in your body? In the film Wonder Woman, Gal Gadot, who plays the eponymous superhero, asks Chris Pine what a watch is. He explains it tells him when to eat, sleep, wake up and work. She looks incredulous.

‘You let this little thing tell you what to do?’

A similarly anxiety-producing trait, lurking near to hurry-sickness and joyless striving, is perfectionism: those with it tend to disproportionately fear failure, getting things wrong, have impossibly high standards and are unduly self-critical. Perfectionism has been linked to 

. According to research into child development from West Virginia University, 40 per cent of children and young people may now be perfectionists. It’s a shift that can be attributed to, in part, the comparison culture of social media, increasingly controlling parenting styles, and a rise in competitive individualism alongside an unstable job market, less affordable housing and opportunities. Yet, as we know deep down, absolute perfection is unattainable. It is a construct, an illusion of our own making, and searching unendingly for it negatively impacts self-esteem and confidence. Climbing down from perfectionism is certainly not easy and not something I will attempt to coach you through, but a couple of suggestions for this come up frequently:

The repercussions of hurry sickness, joyless striving and perfectionism can be at times unwelcome and bizarre. As a society, we’ve become less able to do nothing. How would you feel standing outside and staring up at the sky? How long do you think you could manage it for? A series of studies by psychologists at Virginia and Harvard Universities put participants in a room alone for six to fifteen minutes with no distractions: no smartphone, writing instruments or reading materials. Regardless of age, education, income or amount of time they would usually spend on their phone, they all resoundingly hated it and struggled to concentrate on what they chose to think about, i.e. maintain focus on anything. Next, they were put in the same room with a device that could give them an electric shock that they had previously said they would pay to avoid. Many chose to zap themselves rather than sit quietly with their own thoughts. We’ve become addicted to stimulation. It may be a constantly repeated – and not a little irritating – maxim from therapy or wellness spheres, but we are human beings, not human doings. It’s possible that anxiety is one way by which your body is telling you to get a little better at just being. It was Winnie the Pooh who said, ‘Don’t underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.’

Another effect of all this human-doing is burnout, a psychological syndrome caused by chronic workplace 

 that has not been successfully managed. It’s not the same as anxiety, and anxiety is not always a symptom, but the two are closely linked. Burnout is coloured by physical and mental exhaustion, a massive depletion of energy, and feelings of being trapped or defeated. You might be subsumed by self-doubt and cynicism – and it’s significantly more than simply feeling stressed or overwhelmed. In 2024, Mental Health UK published a burnout report polling 2,000 working adults that found 91 per cent had experienced high or extreme stress in the past year and one in five needed to take time off work due to poor mental health as a result. We are, they concluded, becoming a ‘burnt-out nation’, struggling more and more to manage events unfolding around us.

How To Eat An Elephant: The life-changing power of managing anxiety, one bite at a time

Always Rushed, Never Rested: What Our Cult of Busy Is Really About

Celia Dodd

The prevailing wisdom about becoming a grandparent is that it’s bliss, pure and simple; there’s little room for ambivalence. But for most people the arrival of a grandchild stirs up a complicated mix of emotions as well as overwhelming love and joy. As the heady new baby weeks pass, all kinds of unexpected feelings emerge, from frustration, anxiety, nostalgia and regret, to jealousy, guilt and resentment. It’s all very confusing when you’re supposed to feel nothing but undiluted happiness.

But it’s not surprising. The birth of a first grandchild marks one of life’s biggest transitions, yet the focus is quite rightly not on the grandparents, but on the baby and on the momentous change the new parents are going through. Grandparents understandably pay little attention to the massive parallel adjustment they also have to navigate: a change in how they feel about themselves and the future, a sobering sense of ageing and mortality, a shift in their role in the family and in the way they get on with their adult child. What’s more, grandparents know from experience the pain and anxiety that lie ahead for the parents, as well as the joy and fulfilment.

As a result grandparents have mixed feelings about all kinds of things. Grandchildren are hard to resist, and grandparents long to spend time with them and help out, but they also want to get on with their own lives, and there’s an added urgency to that as they get older. Besides, around a third of grandparents are still working; they’d love to help, but they can’t. 

What makes it extra complicated for this generation is that they seem to be more closely

involved with their grandchildren than ever before. If they take on regular childcare, as millions of grandparents do now, it intensifies family connections even further, but at the same time it can create new sources of tension and ambivalence.

So much hinges on the relationship with the adult child and, crucially, their partner. Both generations are vulnerable as they feel their way into their new roles and work out how to negotiate invisible new boundaries and unstated rules. Grandparents want to be supportive and pass on their hard-won experience to the new parents, but they’re anxious about interfering: the grandparents’ sacred rule is ‘Be there, but don’t interfere’. New parents are often super-sensitive and that can make grandparents feel as if they’re treading on eggshells. They soon learn that unsolicited advice is unwelcome and that even an apparently harmless question can be taken as criticism. Grandparents may find themselves questioning their own behaviour, especially if they get the impression that they’ve done something wrong: did they let the baby nap too long? Was it annoying to tidy the kitchen so enthusiastically? So much goes unsaid on both sides for fear of rocking the boat.

Adult children’s ideas about parenting are inevitably different to the way they were brought up themselves. Sometimes that feels like rejection, and it may even make grandparents reassess their own past parenting. It goes with a sense of being on the periphery of family life rather than at its centre. There’s no doubt that grandparents are the essential cornerstone of the family, but they are no longer in the driving seat. Handing the reins to the next generation takes some getting used to, and it goes with a growing awareness of mortality: ‘The ending of your life arrives on the horizon the moment your first grandchild is born,’ says the psychotherapist Karen Woodall. Fortunately, the presence of a grandchild helps to make sense of it all.

Grandparents are often taken aback when they discover that it’s not the grandparents, but their adult child (and his or her partner), who decide how often they get to see their grandchild. It hurts if it’s not as much as they would like. That’s particularly true if the other set of grandparents sees more of the kids. This often comes down to circumstances, but it’s a common sadness among paternal grandparents. Pangs of jealousy are par for the course, but they don’t feel comfortable. ‘It makes me think there’s something really bad inside me to feel like this, because the other granny is a perfectly nice woman and I’m not usually competitive or jealous,’ one single grandmother told me.

Mixed feelings may be commonplace, but while grandparents are more than happy to share cute snaps, they’re less likely to open up about how they really feel. It’s very different for parents, who have carte blanche to discuss their dilemmas and difficulties. Grandparents feel bad about saying anything even slightly negative. One grandmother in my book sums it up: ‘It’s so difficult to say how you really feel because there’s always this fear of appearing to be ungrateful. Friends say things like “It’s all right for you, you’re so lucky to have grandchildren.” But that denies grandparents the right to express ourselves.’

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