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On Melancholy
Melancholy is not rage or bitterness, it is a noble species of sadness that arises when we are open to the fact that life is inherently difficult for everyone and that suffering and disappointment are...
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On Irritability
Irritability is the tendency to get upset for reasons that seem – to other people – to be pretty minor. Your partner asks you how work went and the way they ask makes you feel intensely agitated. Your...
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On Self-Pity
It was a sunny Sunday afternoon; you were nine years old. Your parents wouldn’t let you have any ice cream if you didn’t do your maths homework. It was achingly unfair. Every other child in the world...
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The Psychology of Colour
Alongside the notes of the musical keyboard and the letters of the alphabet, colours provide the building blocks of our emotions. It is not for nothing that we say we are ‘feeling blue’ or ‘seeing...
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Our Secret Thoughts
We apparently live in an age of honesty and disclosure but in truth most of what we are remains unacceptable and disguised to the world. We simply cannot show too much of our real natures and retain...
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On Being Out of Touch with One’s Feelings
An enormous amount of trouble in the world – especially at work and in relationships – is caused by a peculiar phenomenon of our minds: a tendency to be, as we put it, out of touch with our feelings....
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The Difficulty of Being in the Present
Very many of us suffer from a peculiar-sounding problem: an inability to properly inhabit the stretch of time we call ‘the present’. Maybe we’re on a beautiful beach on a sunny day, the sky is azure...
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On Feeling Depressed
We’re not talking about the extreme, most paralysing, regions of despair – where external medical help is vital. Our target is rather the times when we feel – as indicated by Henry David Thoreau’s...
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The Secret Optimism of Angry People
Angry people sound like gloomy types. We certainly don’t usually think of them as optimists – and yet, beneath their gruff surface, they truly are, much to their cost. Here is Fred. He is often...
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How the Right Words Help Us to Feel the Right Things
You’re in a part of town you used to live in as a teenager. You walk past the house of the girlfriend you knew when you were sixteen. You look up to what used to be her bedroom window. From the...
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Twenty Moods
It’s sometimes remarkably hard to tell other people how we really feel; it may even be tricky for us to get clear about our own moods. So mostly, if people ask how we are, we’ll just say, ‘Fine’ –...
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‘Pure’ OCD – and Intrusive Thoughts
Few mental afflictions are as humbling or as terrifying as what is known as ‘Pure’ OCD or, more colloquially, Intrusive Thoughts. In standard Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, a person is haunted by a...
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On Not Being in the Moment
Life is full of moments where we are meant to feel certain things. The demand starts in early childhood: it’s our birthday – and we are meant to feel happy. Dad is going away for two weeks – and we...
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Why We May Be Angry Rather Than Sad
We are sometimes swept away by a mood of sadness that seems to have no cause. We wake up dispirited and listless. We lack energy and direction. Everything loses its taste and the smallest challenges...
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On Depression
Almost half of us will suffer from depression at some point in our lives, but the condition remains badly misunderstood and therefore often poorly treated. At the heart of our collective difficulty...
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Learning to Listen to One’s Own Boredom
One of the most striking characteristics of small children is their militant aversion to boredom. With ruthless determination, they embark on one occupation after another, shifting whenever an even...
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Of Course We Mess Up!
Maybe you’ve crashed again – and you’re in the dark familiar place. As ever, one mess-up reminds you of all the fiascos you’ve generated in the past and, more broadly, of your fundamental idiocy and –...
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On Disliking Oneself
There is one particularly salient question we should ask in order to measure our levels of emotional well-being: do you broadly feel that you have the right to exist and are, on balance, a good enough...
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On Living in a More Light-Hearted Way
The arguments for approaching life in a grave, serious and unsmiling mood are overwhelming: we are clearly a profoundly wicked species, we continually perpetrate monstrous suffering on one another,...
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How to Manage One’s Moods
Far more than we are inclined to accept and sometimes even realise, we are creatures of mood: that is, our sense of our value as human beings is prone to extraordinary fluctuation. At times, we know...
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