Healthy Mind Psychology

Healthy Mind Psychology A personalized approach to therapy and neurorehabilitation.

When people ask me, “How can talking about my pain possibly change it?”I think it’s a very fair question.You may have sp...
09/03/2026

When people ask me, “How can talking about my pain possibly change it?”
I think it’s a very fair question.

You may have spoken about your pain many times already, and nothing shifted.

But talking, when done in the right way, isn’t just storytelling.
It’s education for the entire system.

Psychology helps us observe the mind, the meanings we’ve made, the patterns we’ve learned.
Neuroscience reminds us that those meanings are wired into physical systems - electrical, chemical, adaptive.

When we bring awareness to both, the mind we can observe and the brain we can’t directly see - we create an opportunity for change across the whole system.

Understanding changes physiology.

And that process can begin with something as simple, and as complex, as a conversation.

What have you noticed about different conversations about your chronic pain or chronic health with different people?










In Dopamine Nation, Dr Anna Lembke describes a world increasingly saturated with high-potency reward, where the substanc...
06/03/2026

In Dopamine Nation, Dr Anna Lembke describes a world increasingly saturated with high-potency reward, where the substances and behaviours that once felt exceptional are now ordinary, accessible, and constant.

When I look at the statistics, I don’t just see individual struggle.
I see systems.

High reward combined with low opportunity.
Easy access combined with limited safety.
Relief available everywhere, but meaning much harder to find.

Addiction, in this light, begins to look less like moral failure and more like adaptation in an environment that constantly pulls the dopamine lever.

I’m curious how you think about this - as individuals, clinicians, or simply people living in this culture.










A new month, a little dose of good news ✨🐑 In West Yorkshire, a therapist’s flock of sheep are offering emotional comfor...
05/03/2026

A new month, a little dose of good news ✨

🐑 In West Yorkshire, a therapist’s flock of sheep are offering emotional comfort to people facing grief and illness, helping them relax, connect and even laugh again.

🏃‍♀️ Research shows that even small amounts of regular exercise can significantly reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety, with especially strong benefits for young adults and postnatal women.

📚 And reading regularly may help keep the brain sharper for longer, supporting memory and cognitive health as we age.

A gentle reminder that small things can make a real difference.

(Stories taken from www.positive.news and www.goodnewspost.co.uk)

And now for some positive news of my own....

I'm out of hibernation!! Now that the sun's started to shine again, I've made it out to reconnect with old and new friends again. In one particular evening, I was much surprised to find on the menu a warm apple drink that I remember fondly from my years in America. There was a particular juxtaposition of my paper cup arriving with a posh smoke bubble on top. And with one swift blow, the bubble released a sensory trip to the Appalachian Mountains. I was back in 2006, with my husband on a road trip where we took a pit stop at a hotel that offered 3 storey floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the mountain valley below. I felt the coziness of the warm drink as I overlooked the colourful leaves in the valley, a true picture of nature's awe. This smoke bubble, here in 2026, unexpectedly caused me to transcend place and time for a brief moment, a moment of both novelty and nostalgia. I thanked my brain for this. How lovely to have unpredictable moments of memory, gratitude, and sensory indulgence, always there at one's disposal, perhaps in moments most unanticipated. Just another post of appreciation for the power and mysteries of our brains.

Have you ever wondered why, in a world of more choice, more comfort, and more access than ever before… so many of us fee...
04/03/2026

Have you ever wondered why, in a world of more choice, more comfort, and more access than ever before… so many of us feel more restless?

This month’s Book of the Month is Dopamine Nation by Dr Anna Lembke - a fascinating exploration of how pain and pleasure share the same circuitry in the brain.

Lembke explains how we’re living in an age of unprecedented dopamine stimulation. Constant reward, novelty, and intensity, and how that very abundance can tip us into imbalance.

What struck me most is how she links individual craving to something much bigger: culture, scarcity mindset, and the environments we live in.

It’s not just about addiction.
It’s about how modern life shapes our nervous systems.

Have you read it, or noticed this in your own life?

In his book 'Forgive for Good', Dr Fred Luskin explains that forgiveness is often made harder than it needs to be by the...
27/02/2026

In his book 'Forgive for Good', Dr Fred Luskin explains that forgiveness is often made harder than it needs to be by the way it’s framed.

As though it’s about excusing harm, forgetting what happened, or forcing ourselves into something before the body is ready.

In my work, I see forgiveness less as a moral demand and more as a shift in what the system is organised around.

Not erasing the past, but no longer living entirely inside it.

I’m curious what feels different when forgiveness is seen this way?

We often talk about holding grudges as something the mind does. However, often it’s the body that’s doing the holding.In...
25/02/2026

We often talk about holding grudges as something the mind does. However, often it’s the body that’s doing the holding.

In this piece, I explore how unresolved hurt can quietly live in the nervous system, not as bitterness, but as protection, and what begins to shift when safety, rather than force, becomes the focus.

If this resonates, the blog is now live - https://www.healthymindpsychology.co.uk/blog/

I’m curious what it opens up for you.

Self-forgiveness is rarely a single moment.It’s a series of small, quiet shifts in how we relate to what we’ve done and ...
23/02/2026

Self-forgiveness is rarely a single moment.

It’s a series of small, quiet shifts in how we relate to what we’ve done and who we believe ourselves to be.

These are some of the ways I see that process unfold.

I’m curious what feels most relevant for you here?

In his book 'Forgive for Good', Luskin explains that anger doesn’t just live in the mind.It moves through the body.Throu...
20/02/2026

In his book 'Forgive for Good', Luskin explains that anger doesn’t just live in the mind.
It moves through the body.
Through the heart.
Through the brain.
Through the organs.
Through the system.

Not as something to suppress,
but something to understand, process, and integrate
before it becomes physiological.

Where do you most feel anger in your body? For me it's in my jaw. The tension of my clenched teeth and aching neck signal that there's something I need to pay attention to.

I’ve created a brief, accessible guide that introduces a safety-based, nervous-system-informed way of understanding symp...
18/02/2026

I’ve created a brief, accessible guide that introduces a safety-based, nervous-system-informed way of understanding symptoms - one that reduces self-blame and supports collaboration with the body. For anyone who’s ever felt confused or betrayed by their body, this might offer a way to understand pain and stress as protection, not failure.

It’s available to download via the link for anyone who might find it useful - https://www.healthymindpsychology.co.uk/healthy-mind-psychology-freebies/

When people tell me their pain “doesn’t make sense,” what they often mean is that it doesn’t make sense in the narrow la...
16/02/2026

When people tell me their pain “doesn’t make sense,” what they often mean is that it doesn’t make sense in the narrow language of medicine, scans and tests.

But the body doesn’t speak in reports. It speaks in patterns, protection, and meaning.

Pain that persists is rarely a sign of weakness or exaggeration.
More often, it’s a system that learned something useful once -
and hasn’t yet had enough safety, clarity, or support to unlearn it.

Understanding this doesn’t remove pain overnight. But it often removes something just as heavy:
the belief that your body is failing you.

After reading 'Forgive for good' by Dr Fred Luskin (my 'book of the month'), it made me realise that I see this pattern ...
13/02/2026

After reading 'Forgive for good' by Dr Fred Luskin (my 'book of the month'), it made me realise that I see this pattern over and over:

People assume they’re holding on to negative emotion because they’re bitter, dramatic, or unwilling to forgive.

But more often, what I see is:
– hurt that was never properly acknowledged
– anger that never found a constructive path
– pain that didn’t feel safe enough to relax

Letting go is rarely about willpower.
It’s usually about safety, understanding, and timing.

Does this resonate with you, or fit with what you’ve been seeing?

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the body less like a machine and more like a building (my current living situation migh...
11/02/2026

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the body less like a machine and more like a building (my current living situation might have something to do with that!) 😅

A structure shaped over time. Foundations laid through experience. Wiring installed under particular conditions. Rooms once created for purposes that no longer make sense. Now, they can feel restrictive.

When pain or medically unexplained symptoms show up, I don’t tend to see it as a fault in the structure, but more as a signal that something in the function of the design is under strain.

And like any building, the goal isn’t complete demolition - it’s understanding how it was built, identifying what can be tweaked, and learning how to live well inside it.

I’m curious how this way of seeing the body lands with you - or do you have another metaphor for the body? I’d love to hear!

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