Tag: Awareness

CULTURAL IDENTITY

CULTURAL IDENTITY

by Kirsten Rossouw ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Mind Over Matter Psych Talks | Season 1 Episode 7 | Written Reflection

I’m writing this from North Carolina, though the story behind that sentence begins much further away. It starts in South Africa, travels through the United Kingdom, crosses the United States, and somehow keeps finding its way back home.

My partner and I recently drove from Montana to North Carolina, a ten day road trip across a country I’d lived in for years without ever quite seeing it properly. We passed through Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota, through national parks and historic sites and landscapes vast enough to make a person feel genuinely small. It was beautiful. It was also, unexpectedly, heavy. Much of the route ran through land connected to Native and Indigenous communities, and alongside the natural beauty I noticed poverty, loss, and communities still carrying the weight of displacement and historical neglect reduced, elsewhere, to a paragraph in a textbook. I wasn’t prepared for how emotional that would make me, and I think that’s because I’ve spent a great deal of my own life thinking about what it actually means to belong somewhere.

One of the stranger things about cultural identity is that other people sometimes seem more confident about who you are than you’re ever required to be yourself. At one stop, a woman at a petrol station assumed I was Native American and began asking me about nearby trails as though I obviously knew the area. In South Dakota, another woman checked my identification and asked whether my name was my native name. Neither moment upset me exactly. If anything, both left me a little sad, because there’s something quietly uncomfortable about being confidently misidentified by someone with no real understanding of the identity they’re assigning you.

I am South African. I am also Coloured, a South African racial and cultural identity with its own specific historical and social context, and my heritage includes African, European and Indian ancestry among others. That identity doesn’t translate neatly into every country’s understanding of race, and that mismatch has been its own education. When I first started working in the United States back in 2017, a colleague once told me I couldn’t possibly be Coloured because I was African, and therefore, in his framework, I had to be Black. I remember thinking, quite genuinely, how are you arguing with me about my own identity. I tried explaining the South African context, including the fact that the word Coloured carries an entirely different history there than the slur it’s associated with in America. That conversation taught me something worth holding onto. Our cultural frameworks are not universal. American history is not world history. A word doesn’t automatically carry the same meaning simply because the spelling matches, and neither does identity.

There’s a psychological concept sitting underneath most of this, cultural identity, the part of our sense of self that develops through our connection to culture, ethnicity, nationality, language, tradition, belief, family and community. It isn’t handed to us at birth and quietly stored away. It develops through lived experience. We learn what’s considered normal, what’s acceptable, what makes us feel connected, and sometimes, unfortunately, we learn which parts of ourselves make other people uncomfortable. I learned that particular lesson very young.

My family moved from South Africa to North London when I was a child, and we spent roughly a decade in the United Kingdom. I want to be clear that the move itself was one of the better decisions my family ever made, full of genuinely beautiful memories, friendships and achievements. But being grateful for a chapter doesn’t require pretending every page of it was easy. On my first day at an English primary school, feeling academically confident and entirely comfortable in how I spoke, I was asked to count. The first word out of my mouth was naught. The classroom erupted into laughter. They asked me to repeat it. I did, and the laughter only grew. I had no idea what I’d done wrong. I’d simply used a word that made complete sense to me, and suddenly my own language had become a visible marker of difference. That was only the beginning. At break time I was called racial slurs, told by other African children that I couldn’t really be African because I didn’t look African, and handed labels like mixed breed and half caste that I had no framework yet to process. I only understood, as a child, that the version of myself I’d arrived with wasn’t being particularly well received. So I started adapting.

This is where psychology gives language to something I originally just experienced as trying to fit in. When people move between cultures, they often go through acculturation, the psychological and behavioural changes that develop through sustained contact with another culture. New social rules get learned. Expressions get picked up. The way you dress, speak, eat and even understand yourself can shift, sometimes exciting, sometimes painful, often both. For me, the first thing to change was my accent. I picked up local slang, adjusted my pronunciation, and grew genuinely anxious about reading aloud in class because my own voice had become something I was suddenly self conscious of. Eventually I got remarkably good at shifting it depending on company, though I didn’t have a name for what I was doing at the time. It was code-switching, the process of adjusting how we communicate depending on the social or cultural context we’re in, whether that’s language, accent, vocabulary, tone or behaviour. My South African accent came naturally at home. Around British friends, I adapted. It became genuine over time rather than performed, simply another real part of me that had developed alongside everything else. But there’s a meaningful difference between choosing how you communicate and feeling like you have to change how you communicate in order to be accepted, and that distinction matters enormously. Code-switching can be a genuinely useful social skill. It becomes something closer to self erasure when the underlying message shifts from flexibility to the way you naturally speak simply isn’t acceptable here.

My lunchbox became another quiet battleground. I remember opening it at school to good curry, the kind of properly flavourful, second day curry that genuinely earns its reputation, and clocking the turned noses and reactions from the kids around me. Eventually I stopped wanting those lunches at all and started choosing blander food instead. Looking back, I wasn’t simply changing what I ate. I was negotiating my own visibility. Food was home, family, culture, all at once, and when that culture started attracting unwanted attention, I quietly began hiding it. That’s one of the less obvious ways cultural assimilation actually happens, the gradual process through which someone from a minority or migrant group increasingly adopts the dominant culture around them, sometimes voluntarily, sometimes because the environment simply makes adaptation feel necessary, and often without ever consciously deciding to do it. I loosened my tie. I rolled up my skirt. I asked my mother to stop walking me to school so I could walk home the way the other children did. I wasn’t thinking, today I will assimilate. I was a child trying to make friends, which is exactly why cultural identity and belonging are so tightly bound together. We don’t develop identity in isolation. We develop it in relationship with the people around us, and if those people repeatedly signal that certain parts of you are strange or embarrassing, that message tends to get absorbed long before you have the tools to challenge it. For a while I distanced myself from my Indian heritage too, even though my grandfather is Indian and that history is genuinely mine. The hostility I’d encountered made we want to quietly step away from it. That’s what makes experiences like this psychologically significant. The real problem was never simply that someone said something unkind. It’s the message sitting underneath it, that something about you makes you unacceptable here, and when you’re young, that message can settle in before you’re equipped to question it.

Migration rarely gets talked about in these terms. People discuss it as an adventure, a new home, a new school, a new opportunity, and all of that is true. What gets left out is the psychological labour of learning to exist inside an entirely different social environment while simultaneously trying to work out who you actually are. You’re not just learning where the supermarket is. You’re learning the unwritten rules, often while still a child, often while doing both at once.

I was proudly South African before I ever left. Growing up in a diverse, urban part of the country, with friends across different races and backgrounds, I simply hadn’t spent much of my childhood thinking consciously about race at all. Then, almost overnight, I found myself being categorised, questioned, labelled and corrected, moving from a place where my identity had felt entirely ordinary to one where parts of it suddenly needed explaining. And when I eventually returned to South Africa as an older teenager, I discovered I didn’t feel completely South African anymore either. I’d changed. I’d built independence, friendships and achievements in the UK, absorbed enough of that culture that coming home meant facing another, quieter kind of adjustment. I wasn’t automatically Coloured enough anymore, not because anything about my heritage had changed, but because my experiences had. This is something people rarely understand about cultural identity. Returning home geographically doesn’t automatically return you to the person who left. There’s a real term for the disorientation that can follow, reverse culture shock, and I lived through my own version of it, missing the independence and friendships I’d built abroad while simultaneously feeling a stronger pull back toward being proudly South African than I’d ever felt before leaving.

Eventually I stopped treating those identities as though they were in competition. I didn’t need to decide whether I was more South African or more British, because I could simply be both. That’s really where the idea of a bicultural identity becomes useful, identifying with and navigating more than one cultural framework at once, not by splitting yourself neatly in half but by letting different cultural experiences become part of the same whole person. The British part of me never made the South African part less authentic. It just meant I’d grown somewhere else too. Today I can genuinely value the independence the UK gave me alongside the hospitality, family closeness, respect for elders, food, music and warmth that shaped my South African upbringing, without needing to choose between them. That, I think, is the point at which cultural identity stops being about survival and starts being about ownership, because there’s a real difference between adapting because you have to and adapting because you have the freedom to choose what actually fits you.

Living in the United States as an adult gave me yet another version of this same lesson. I’ve fielded some remarkable questions about South Africa, plenty of assumptions about my race, my accent, my heritage, occasionally from people who couldn’t have located the country on a map. I’ve had to explain, repeatedly, that Africa is not a country, that South Africa carries its own distinct history, that being African doesn’t automatically determine someone’s race, and that being mixed doesn’t mean the person in front of you is confused about who they are. But something in me has genuinely shifted. The girl who once hid her curry is now considerably more comfortable talking about exactly where she comes from. The child who altered her accent to fit into a room now understands that her voice never needed anyone’s permission. The teenager who came home wondering whether she was still enough now knows identity was never something measured by how perfectly it fits someone else’s expectations.

What I’ve grown most comfortable with, honestly, is educating people who genuinely want to learn. There’s something worthwhile in that exchange, someone asks, I explain, they listen, and I usually learn something about them in return. That’s cultural curiosity at its best, and it’s worth distinguishing from its opposite. Being interested in another culture should never turn the person from that culture into a walking encyclopedia, and curiosity without humility curdles quickly into assumption. I don’t mind someone saying they don’t know much about South Africa and asking me to explain. What sits far less comfortably is being told, flatly, no, that isn’t what you are. There’s a real difference between not knowing and refusing to learn, and that distinction matters more and more in a world where increasing numbers of people are living across cultural boundaries rather than neatly inside one.

There’s an odd contradiction built into most immigrant experiences worth naming plainly. You leave because something mattered enough to make leaving worthwhile, and then you spend years defending exactly why the place you left still matters to you, your food, your language, your people, your history, sometimes defending yourself against misconceptions that were never accurate in the first place. I’ve done this from childhood well into adulthood, from a young girl explaining why she was African despite not matching someone else’s visual expectation, to a grown woman explaining what being Coloured actually means. But that lifelong translating has given me something real in return. It’s made me curious about other people’s cultures, interested in ancestry and migration, and considerably more alert to how quickly an us and a them can get invented out of very little.

Cultural identity was never only about asking who am I. Sometimes the more useful questions are who was I allowed to be, who did I have to become to feel safe, which parts of myself did I hide, which parts did I adapt, which parts did I eventually reclaim, and perhaps most importantly, which parts do I now actively choose to keep. For anyone who’s moved countries, married into another culture, grown up between cultures, been raised by immigrant parents, or simply never quite fit the cultural box other people expected them to occupy, those questions tend to land with real weight. Identity isn’t fixed. It evolves. Experiences leave marks, and so do people and places, some of which hurt, some of which teach, some of which end up making us considerably stronger. Which is worth remembering in both directions, because a careless comment about someone’s accent might feel insignificant to whoever says it, and a joke about someone’s lunch might be forgotten within minutes, but the person on the receiving end often carries it for a great deal longer. Children in particular are learning who they are largely through the reactions of the people around them, which means one of the more useful things any of us can practise in an increasingly multicultural world is becoming a little less certain about other people and a little more genuinely curious. Ask before assuming. Listen before correcting. Learn before judging. Someone’s difference is rarely a problem waiting to be solved. More often it’s simply a story you haven’t heard yet.

I think about all of this now from North Carolina, tracing the line from the girl who arrived in North London with her South African accent and her curry filled lunchbox, through the teenager who came home carrying pieces of Britain with her, to the woman who ended up in the United States once again explaining her own identity to strangers. I don’t feel divided anymore. I feel layered, and there’s a real difference between the two. I carry South Africa with me. I carry the UK with me. I carry every friendship, every place, every uncomfortable conversation and every version of myself that had to work out how to belong, and none of those versions needs to disappear for the current one to exist. That, I think, is what genuinely growing into a cultural identity looks like. Not becoming less of where you came from, and not becoming more of somewhere else, but growing secure enough in yourself to carry the whole collection at once. Belonging, in the end, was probably never about finding the one place you fit perfectly. It’s closer to reaching the point where you no longer need to edit yourself to fit anywhere at all.

Mind Over Matter.

Disclaimer: This article is for general psychoeducational and informational purposes only. It reflects personal experiences and perspectives and is not a substitute for individual counselling, psychological assessment, diagnosis, or treatment. Where personal experiences are shared, identifying details have been changed or omitted to protect privacy.

SEVEN BEST DOCTORS

SEVEN BEST DOCTORS

by Kirsten Rossouw ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Mind Over Matter Psych Talks | Season 1 Episode 6 | Written Reflection

There are certain things we spend an extraordinary amount of money trying to replace that have been sitting quietly in front of us the entire time. Sunlight. Water. Rest. Fresh air. Movement. Good food. Even the moon. We call them ordinary because they’re familiar, and perhaps that’s exactly why we overlook them.

I started thinking about this after a conversation with colleagues about how readily we reach for medication, products and quick fixes the moment something in the body or mind feels out of balance. It got me thinking about how easy it is to become disconnected from the things that supported us long before wellness became an industry. Before anyone misunderstands me, this isn’t an argument against medicine. There are moments when medicine is necessary, important and genuinely life-saving, and I’m not suggesting anyone replace professional healthcare with a walk in the sunshine and a glass of water. But there is something worth remembering about the basics. Our bodies aren’t machines that only respond when we intervene from the outside. They’re constantly responding to the environment around them, and sometimes, before going searching for something complicated, it’s worth asking whether we’ve neglected something incredibly simple.

For me, that starts with the sun. I grew up in a beach city in South Africa, so sunshine was never something I had to deliberately schedule into my day, it was simply there, part of childhood, sand between your toes and that particular exhaustion that comes after a full day outside, the good kind of tired that meant bedtime never had to be negotiated. Then I moved to the UK, and the sun developed a rather impressive disappearing act. I was too young at the time to understand seasonal affective disorder, but I could see that the lack of sunlight affected people, more lethargy, lower moods, an almost instinctive pull toward staying indoors. Looking back, I understand that differently now. Daylight plays a genuine role in our circadian rhythm, and sunlight supports vitamin D production, which in turn supports bone and immune health, while light exposure more broadly helps regulate the body’s relationship with sleep. There’s also something about sunshine that doesn’t always need a scientific explanation. You wake up, see a bright blue sky, and the day suddenly feels possible, even though nothing has actually changed, the emails are still waiting, the laundry remains committed to its existence. But you feel a little more ready to meet the day, and that matters. None of this is a suggestion to spend hours in unprotected sun, skin protection matters and excessive UV exposure carries real risk, my own childhood memories involve sunscreen applied with the dedication of a small construction project, white cast and all. But safe, sensible daylight exposure is something we shouldn’t take for granted, especially when we’re feeling low. Sometimes you simply need to step outside and let the sun find you.

Moving from South Africa to the UK also made me notice something else I’d taken for granted: water. I’d grown up drinking tap water without a second thought, then found myself somewhere I wasn’t particularly fond of the taste or quality, and started buying bottled water instead. It sounds like such a small thing, but it made me realise how invisible water becomes when access to it is easy. We only really notice it once it isn’t there. Our bodies depend on adequate hydration for so many everyday functions, and dehydration leaves us feeling tired, sluggish and foggy, which is why I like the idea of beginning the morning with water rather than reaching straight for coffee, giving the body something it actually needs after hours of sleep without any. Water isn’t only something we drink, either. It can also be somewhere we go. I grew up around the sea, and I underestimated how much that relationship was doing for me until I was away from it, there’s something about floating that temporarily convinces you that you don’t have to carry quite so much. The sound of waves breaking against the shore becomes its own kind of mental white noise, and rain does something similar for me, the sound of it, the smell of it, simply standing outside and letting the weather happen around me. There’s something grounding about that. You don’t have to do anything or fix anything. You can simply listen. And if the ocean or standing in the rain isn’t your thing, a warm bath or a long shower can offer that same sense of slowing down, a few quiet minutes in water without your phone demanding your attention. Water doesn’t always have to be an activity. Sometimes it can simply be a pause.

Which brings me naturally to something we’re becoming increasingly bad at giving ourselves: rest. We live in a culture that can make exhaustion sound like an achievement. I’ve been so busy. I barely slept. I’ll rest when everything is done, except everything is rarely done, there’s always another email, another responsibility, another thing waiting, and somewhere along the way we started treating rest as though it has to be earned. It doesn’t. Sleep isn’t wasted time and rest isn’t laziness, the body is doing important work while we’re asleep, restoring itself, regulating processes, consolidating memories, supporting the brain and body in ways we don’t consciously experience. Anyone who’s had a genuinely terrible night’s sleep knows this without needing a textbook to explain it, you wake up irritable, your concentration is somewhere in another postcode, and the smallest inconvenience suddenly feels like a personal attack. Good rest isn’t simply about collapsing into bed at the end of an exhausting day. It’s also about creating an environment in which the mind understands the day is actually ending, dimming the lights, putting the phone down, letting the noise get quieter, giving yourself permission to transition. If the last thing your brain experiences before sleep is an endless stream of messages and other people’s lives, it’s unreasonable to expect it to switch off on command. Sometimes the body simply needs reminding that it’s allowed to rest.

And when I think about rest, I inevitably think about breathing, another thing we do constantly without giving it much attention at all. I only really began paying attention to my breath once I discovered yoga, something automatic suddenly became something I could consciously work with. Belly breathing was one of the first techniques I explored, and later I started using structured patterns like 4-7-8, particularly when my anxiety was running high. There’s something strangely powerful about giving your attention to the rhythm, inhale, pause, exhale, again, because for a few moments there’s genuinely nowhere else for your mind to go. I particularly enjoy doing this outdoors. Fresh air is one of those things we only notice once we’ve been indoors too long, you step outside and suddenly realise how stale everything had felt. When you’re feeling low, I know going outside can feel like the last thing you want to do, the bed feels safer, the curtains feel better closed, the world feels like too much effort. But if you can manage it, put your shoes on and step outside. You don’t need to conquer anything. Just breathe. Notice the air, the season, how differently spring smells from autumn, the particular sharpness of winter, how summer feels against your skin. There’s something grounding about remembering that you’re a body living in a world, rather than simply a mind trapped inside one.

Once you’re outside, you might as well move a little. Movement has always had a complicated relationship with me because I spent so much of my younger life playing competitive sport, and when you’re young, movement is simply part of the routine, built into your day without much thought. Then adulthood arrives and movement becomes something you have to schedule. The gym wasn’t always the answer for me, after years of competitive sport, my body sometimes needed something that felt less like punishment and more like care, which is where yoga came in during COVID, movement my body actually wanted, less like fighting my muscles and more like giving them a massage. That’s a useful way of looking at exercise generally. It shouldn’t always feel like punishment for having a body. Sometimes it’s simply a way of showing your body that you still care about it, whether that’s walking, swimming, running, dancing around the kitchen or taking the stairs instead of turning a walk into a performance. You don’t have to become the person who wakes up at five and runs ten kilometres before breakfast. Start where you are, move a little more, then move again tomorrow. Consistency has always made more sense to me than perfection.

Movement can’t exist entirely separately from what we’re putting into the body, either. You can exercise until the cows come home, but if you’re consistently giving your body very little real nourishment, eventually it’s going to have something to say about it. Food became something I appreciated far more once I moved away from South Africa. Growing up, I came home to a proper meal, my mother firmly of the opinion that a plate should look like a plate, vegetables, carbohydrates, protein and enough colour to make it obvious that something living had once been involved. I didn’t realise at the time how fortunate that was. Once I moved away, I was suddenly surrounded by boxed meals and highly processed food that looked convenient but didn’t leave me feeling particularly good, and my gut noticed, my body noticed, and eventually I started listening. That’s one of the most important parts of nutrition, learning to listen to your own body instead of blindly following whatever food trend happens to be shouting loudest. Food isn’t simply about weight. It’s fuel and nourishment, and it affects our energy, digestion, concentration and how we feel physically, and there’s no prize for eating something that makes you miserable simply because somebody online decided it was healthy. Your body gets a vote too. For me, getting back to basics with food has meant appreciating simple, nourishing meals and paying real attention to what actually makes me feel well.

And then, after all that talk of what we put into the body and how we move through the day, it’s worth looking up, because there’s one final natural rhythm we don’t talk about nearly enough: the moon. Not because I believe it’s some magical cure for whatever troubles us, the evidence for specific claims about lunar phases changing human behaviour is considerably less convincing than the evidence around daylight, sleep and circadian rhythms. But the moon represents something we badly need reminding of, that we’re cyclical beings, not designed to operate at full capacity every single day. There’s light and darkness, activity and stillness, waking and sleeping, expansion and retreat. The natural world doesn’t apologise for changing. Trees don’t feel guilty when they lose their leaves, the sky doesn’t apologise for going dark, the ocean doesn’t stay still simply because we’d prefer it to. Everything moves through cycles. Why should we be any different. Perhaps that’s why I like looking at the moon at night. It gives us perspective. You can have a difficult day, an overwhelming week, a season of life that feels entirely upside down, and then you look up and there it is, quietly carrying on. It doesn’t solve your problems. But sometimes perspective doesn’t need to solve anything. Sometimes it simply needs to remind you that your problems are not the entire universe.

That’s really what I keep coming back to with all seven of these natural doctors. They aren’t about finding a miraculous alternative to healthcare. They’re about remembering the relationship we already have with the world around us. The sun reminds us to step outside. Water reminds us to replenish. Rest reminds us that productivity is not the same thing as wellbeing. Air reminds us to breathe. Movement reminds us that our bodies are meant to be lived in. Food reminds us that nourishment matters. And the moon reminds us that we’re allowed to have seasons. I think we’ve become very good at complicating health, always another product, another programme, another supplement promising to optimise us, and some of those things surely have their place. But I keep wondering whether we sometimes need to stop trying to optimise our lives long enough to actually live them. Go outside. Drink some water. Eat something that makes you feel good. Move your body. Breathe properly. Sleep. Look up. None of these things are glamorous, and none of them will arrive in beautiful packaging or promise to transform your life in seven days. But perhaps that’s exactly why they matter. They’ve been here all along. Getting back to basics isn’t going backwards, it’s remembering what we knew before everything became so complicated. Sometimes the way forward isn’t about discovering something new. Sometimes it’s about returning to something we forgot.

Mind Over Matter.

Disclaimer: This article is for general psychoeducational and informational purposes only. It reflects personal experiences and perspectives and is not a substitute for individual counselling, psychological assessment, diagnosis, or treatment. Where personal experiences are shared, identifying details have been changed or omitted to protect privacy.

QUARTERLY CHECK IN

QUARTERLY CHECK IN

by Kirsten Rossouw ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Mind Over Matter Psych Talks | Season 1 Episode 5 | Written Reflection

There’s something about the first day of a new month that makes you look backwards before you start looking forwards. Add a long weekend, the end of the first quarter of the year, and the beginning of spring, and suddenly there are several little markers in time all asking the same question: where are you now. I’ve always liked the symbolism of those moments. In South Africa, we take public holidays seriously, a long weekend is practically an institution in itself, and there’s a particular atmosphere around this time of year that I can feel even when I’m not home. But beyond the holiday itself, there’s something useful about the timing. The first three months are behind us. The rest of the year is still sitting in front of us. There’s enough distance to see what’s actually happened, but enough time left to change what hasn’t.

That’s why I’ve become quite fond of the idea of a quarterly check-in. We’re very good at beginning things. January arrives and suddenly we’re going to read more, exercise more, save more, complain less, become more organised, improve our relationships, take better care of ourselves, and somehow emerge as a completely new person by December. Then life starts happening. By the halfway mark, some of those goals have quietly disappeared into the background, others have become unrealistic, some no longer matter, and occasionally we’re still dragging around a goal that belonged to a version of ourselves who existed nine months earlier. By December, you and that goal are no longer friends. That’s where checking in becomes important. A goal should have a destination, but it should also have a few rest stops along the way, otherwise we spend so much energy trying to get somewhere that we never actually ask whether we’re still heading in the right direction.

For me, journaling has made that process much more tangible. There’s something about seeing your own thoughts written down that makes it far harder to negotiate with yourself, you have the receipts. Looking back through daily entries, I can see what I was paying attention to, what I was struggling with, what I stayed consistent about, and what kept slipping through the cracks. A thought that feels enormous on a Tuesday can look completely different read again six weeks later, and that distance matters. A quarterly reflection isn’t just about whether you achieved your goals. It’s an opportunity to ask whether those goals still belong to you. Maybe something needs more time. Maybe it needs approaching differently. Maybe it needs postponing, or maybe you’ve discovered it was never actually a priority to begin with. Dropping a goal doesn’t automatically mean you failed. Sometimes changing direction is the most honest thing you can do, because life doesn’t remain still while we pursue our January plans, relationships change, work changes, circumstances change, we change, and there’s no reason our goals should be immune to that. What matters is that we don’t become so attached to the original plan that we stop paying attention to the person actually living through it.

That’s why my own check-ins aren’t only about productivity. I want to know how I feel. What does my body need from me right now. Am I giving it the basics. What’s brought me joy. What have I accomplished. What am I proud of. What small victories have happened that I might otherwise dismiss because they don’t look impressive on paper. And perhaps most importantly, what can I celebrate. Celebration is an underrated part of self-reflection, we’re often remarkably efficient at remembering where we fell short and strangely forgetful when it comes to giving ourselves credit. There’s always something we could have done better. That doesn’t mean it has to become the entire story.

This particular first quarter was also intertwined with Lent, which makes the reflection feel especially personal. I grew up Catholic, so Lent has always shaped how I understand this time of year. As a child, my sacrifices were fairly straightforward, giving up sweets or fizzy drinks, and to a seven year old, giving up something you love for several weeks can feel like a fairly serious spiritual negotiation. As I’ve grown older, I’ve understood it differently. The things I need to examine are no longer sitting on a supermarket shelf. They’re far more internal. Lent has become a period where I look at the parts of myself I don’t always want to confront, habits, attitudes, reactions and pieces of myself that may once have served a purpose but no longer do. There’s a certain vulnerability in admitting that parts of you need work, but perhaps that’s the point. There’s something powerful about looking at yourself without immediately rushing to defend yourself. For me, faith adds another layer to that, prayer, sacrifice, forgiveness and self-examination becoming ways of making space for something different, an idea of letting certain parts of ourselves die off so something healthier can take their place. There’s a psychological parallel there too, regardless of whether someone approaches it through faith. Sometimes growth requires us to stop feeding something. A coping mechanism that once protected you can eventually become something that keeps you stuck, a pattern that helped you survive one season of life may not be appropriate for the next, and the difficult part is recognising the difference.

That distinction becomes especially relevant during periods of fasting or sacrifice. When you remove something you’ve been relying on, even temporarily, you may discover it was doing more emotional work than you realised, which can leave you feeling vulnerable. I don’t think that vulnerability should automatically be read as failure. It can be information. If something you’ve removed leaves you struggling, that’s often an invitation to look at what healthier coping mechanisms might take its place. And I think sacrifice, understood this way, needs care. It shouldn’t become punishment, or an exercise in proving you can endure discomfort for its own sake. The more meaningful version of sacrifice is therapeutic. It creates space for true self-examination, asks what needs to change, and then challenges you to actually live differently.

Growing up, Lent was very much a family and community experience, moving between parishes, spending time with extended family, and because I come from a diverse background, I was also regularly surrounded by people observing entirely different religious traditions. There’s something quite beautiful about the moments when Lent, Ramadan and Passover overlap, different faiths, different rituals, different histories, all simultaneously entering periods of sacrifice, reflection and spiritual discipline. Nobody is necessarily walking the same path, but there’s a shared recognition that sometimes we need to step back from ordinary life and look inward. And for anyone who doesn’t connect with religion at all, the seasons themselves offer a similar language for the same kind of reflection. Spring has always felt like a natural invitation to begin again. After winter, there’s more light, more warmth, new growth pushing its way into the landscape, symbolism almost too obvious, though sometimes obvious things are obvious for a reason. Spring is renewal. The first quarter asks us to take stock. Put them together and there’s a rather beautiful opportunity to ask what you want to take forward and what you’re ready to leave behind. Even nature seems to understand the concept, trees shed what they no longer need, new growth arrives when conditions are right, and nobody looks at a tree in winter and accuses it of failing simply because it isn’t blooming. We could stand to extend ourselves the same grace. Our own bodies respond to changing seasons too, light and darkness influencing the biological systems involved in sleep, energy and mood, and after darker winter months, increased daylight can feel like a shift in how the day is experienced. There’s something wonderfully grounding about simply being outside when the season changes, noticing things you don’t notice while rushing, the smell of flowers, the sound of birds, the returning colour in the landscape. A walk can become a form of meditation without ever being labelled one, which is part of why seasonal reflection is so useful, it gets us out of our heads long enough to remember we’re also bodies, environments and creatures moving through time, not spreadsheets or productivity machines. We’re people having seasons.

This particular quarter of my own year made that especially clear. I’ve been trying to read more, and setting the simple goal of a chapter a day has been one of the things I’ve managed to stay fairly consistent with. I’ve also been protecting the routines that support my mental wellbeing, yoga, meditation, journaling, and when I miss a day, I try not to let that missed day become an excuse to abandon the whole routine, I simply find my way back to it. That’s another lesson in consistency worth naming plainly. Missing something once isn’t the same as giving up. I’ve also been working on something less tangible, becoming kinder, presenting myself to the world with a little more softness, and Lent has made me examine what gets in the way of that. Why do I react the way I do. What am I still carrying. What am I holding onto that makes compassion harder. Where do I need to forgive myself. Self-compassion hasn’t always come naturally to me, and I don’t think it comes naturally to everyone, we’re often far more willing to extend understanding to another person than to ourselves. But the more I practise kindness outwardly, the more I’ve had to question the way I speak inwardly.

Which brings me to something else I’ve been consciously working on: complaining. Not because I believe we should pretend everything is wonderful all the time, that isn’t realistic and forced positivity isn’t particularly helpful either. There are difficult situations, some environments are toxic, some things deserve to be discussed, sometimes you need to vent. But I’ve noticed how easily a complaint can become a home. You start with one frustrating conversation, then another, and suddenly you’re spending enormous amounts of mental energy circling the same thing, the problem itself unchanged but your relationship with it grown considerably heavier. I’ve been trying to interrupt that pattern, not by denying what’s difficult but by giving something else room to exist alongside it, more conversations lately about things that excite me rather than constant returns to whatever drains me. There’s something quite special about being able to look at where you are and realize this is a life you once couldn’t have imagined for yourself, new places, new roads, experiences you never thought you’d have. That doesn’t mean every day feels magical. Some days I still want to sink into whatever’s bothering me and stay there a while, I’m human. But gratitude has become less about pretending difficult things don’t exist and more about refusing to let them become the only thing I can see, which is where self-talk becomes important. The way we speak to ourselves during difficult moments matters, and using affirmations and mantras during meditation has helped shift that internal dialogue over time. Sometimes the moments we most need compassionate self-talk are exactly the moments it feels least believable. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t practice it anyway.

This particular quarter also made me rethink what charity looks like for me. I still believe deeply in supporting larger organisations and causes, but I’ve become more interested in looking closer to home too, at the people in our own circles who need a helping hand, friends, family, neighbours and community members who can be overlooked simply because their needs aren’t presented through a large campaign. Sometimes generosity is much closer than we think, and that’s really what I want to carry into the next quarter. I don’t want these reflections to become another set of January resolutions that quietly disappear when the calendar turns. I want them to become part of how I move through the rest of the year, continuing to lean into compassion, keep practising kindness, keep reading, protect the routines that ground me, and keep supporting people close to home while contributing to causes further out too. There are things I know need more attention, nutrition being one I’ve let slip while focusing on everything else, and that’s exactly why the quarterly check-in is useful. I don’t have to punish myself for what I didn’t do. I can simply notice it and decide it deserves more attention now.

That, perhaps, is the whole point. A quarterly check-in isn’t a performance review, sitting across from yourself with a red pen marking everything wrong. It’s a conversation, an honest one, looking at the person you’ve been for the past three months and asking whether their choices are taking them closer to who they want to become. Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes it’s complicated. Sometimes you discover the thing you thought you wanted isn’t important anymore, and sometimes you realize you’ve actually come further than you gave yourself credit for. We need room for all three, because if we only measure progress by what remains unfinished, we’ll always feel behind. So as this next quarter begins, I’m carrying a few things forward, leaving a few things behind, and making space for whatever needs more attention. That’s my progress report. Not perfect. Not finished. But moving. And perhaps that’s enough. We don’t need to wait until December to decide whether we had a good year. We can pause now, take stock of the first three months, keep what still serves us, release what doesn’t, celebrate what deserves celebrating, and then, with a little more wisdom than we had in January, begin the next quarter.

Mind Over Matter.

Disclaimer: This article is for general psychoeducational and informational purposes only. It reflects personal experiences and perspectives and is not a substitute for individual counselling, psychological assessment, diagnosis, or treatment. Where personal experiences are shared, identifying details have been changed or omitted to protect privacy.

GOOD DEEDS

GOOD DEEDS

by Kirsten Rossouw ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Mind Over Matter Psych Talks | Season 1 Episode 4 | Written Reflection

It’s a beautiful, sunny morning here in Montana. There’s something about being surrounded by snow capped mountains, sunlight spilling through the valleys and little streams running between the trees that makes you pause for a moment. Everything a little slower. A little quieter. Perhaps when the world around you goes quiet enough, you start noticing things you’d otherwise rush past.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about good deeds. Not the polished, applause worthy version we sometimes picture, the fundraiser, the headline making rescue, the grand gesture. I mean the everyday kind. The good deed that happens in an ordinary interaction, that nobody else notices, and that is easy to overlook precisely because it rarely feels significant enough to count.

That’s actually something I’ve had to rethink in myself, and it starts, as a lot of things do for me, with where I first learnt that giving was something you did rather than something you felt.

Growing up, the world could feel quite harsh to me, but my community often felt warm, and a lot of that warmth was tied to church and religion. That was where I first learnt that a good deed wasn’t a feeling. It was an action. I remember watching my family make offerings at church, even during times when I knew money was tight. They were not giving because they had plenty to spare, but because giving was part of what they believed in. Every mass, without fail, there would be an offering. I watched people pray for the world, sacrifice their time and show up for people who needed them. I became heavily involved in my own religion too. My family are very passionate Catholics, but there was also something about service itself that appealed to me. I was an altar server for years, and looking back, it was one of the first responsibilities I experienced that felt completely selfless. There was something satisfying about doing what needed to be done without expecting anything in return.

In psychology, that description matters more than it sounds. A good deed is generally understood as an act intended to benefit someone else, regardless of whether it benefits you too. The benefit to another person is the defining feature, not the size of the act or the effort behind it. I didn’t have the language for that as a child serving at the altar, but I understood the feeling of it perfectly well.

Then life happened. Some of what I experienced hardened me. I stopped attending church as much and started making excuses, growing less connected to that part of myself. Prayer, interestingly, never really left. It had been instilled too deeply for that. I think sometimes we don’t completely lose the habit of doing good for others. We just lose our connection to it.

For me, that connection started returning during COVID. I began thinking about concrete things I could actually do for other people, small good deeds that might create a little more lightness during a period that felt incredibly heavy. I became involved in community projects and volunteer work, some of it genuinely difficult, because when you spend time around people who are struggling, you can’t remain untouched by what you see. It brings you face to face with how much people carry.

Then came the riots in Durban. A lot of the hard work my family had been involved in was destroyed, and watching that happen was painful. But what stays with me just as strongly is what happened afterwards. A group of us in the community came together to protect what we could and rebuild what had been damaged. That wasn’t one good deed. It was hundreds of small ones stacked on top of each other, someone bringing food, someone offering a spare pair of hands, someone simply showing up for a second day when it would have been easier not to. I felt fulfilled, but not in a superficial way. I wasn’t simply helping other people. I was helping my own family too. There was a genuine sense of purpose in knowing my actions were part of something bigger than my own circumstances.

That experience is a useful place to bring in some of the psychoeducation, because most of us are working from a very narrow definition of a good deed without realising it. In psychology, good deeds fall under the broader umbrella of prosocial behaviour, meaning any voluntary action intended to benefit another person or group. That includes helping, sharing, comforting, cooperating, volunteering and offering emotional or practical support. Researchers studying prosocial behaviour have consistently found that it does not need to be costly, planned or visible to qualify. A five second act, such as holding a door or offering a genuine compliment, meets the same definition as a much larger gesture.

What differs is not whether something is a good deed, but its scale, its cost to the giver and how visible it is to others. Some good deeds are small and momentary, while others are sustained and structural, such as long term volunteering or fundraising. Some cost us very little, while others involve real sacrifice of time, money, comfort or energy, which is closer to what psychologists specifically call altruism, helping that comes at a cost to the giver. And some are witnessed and socially rewarded, while many of the most meaningful ones are not witnessed at all. I mention this because I think most of us quietly believe a good deed only counts if it scores highly on all three of those. It has to be big, costly and, ideally, seen. That belief makes good deeds feel rare and difficult, when in reality the vast majority of prosocial behaviour that shapes daily life is small, low cost and invisible.

This year, I’ve been trying to become more intentional about my own good deeds, and my journal has actually played a surprisingly important role. One of its prompts asks me to write down a daily act of self care alongside a daily good deed. At the start of the year, I found the good deed section far harder than expected. I would sit there wondering what I’d actually done that counted, because I’d created a very specific idea of what a good deed was supposed to look like. Something grand. Something significant. Something worthy of writing down. Eventually, I realized I was making it far more complicated than it needed to be.

Once I started paying attention to the smaller moments, the entries became much easier. Letting someone go ahead of me. Leaving money in a vending machine for a stranger. Holding a door open. Complimenting someone. Checking in on a person having a difficult time. None of it was particularly remarkable. Most of it took almost no effort. But perhaps that’s exactly why it matters. We often assume we need more time, money or resources before we can meaningfully contribute to someone else’s day. We imagine a good deed as something requiring a sacrifice large enough to be noticed. My journal made me realize I was overlooking the opportunities already sitting inside my ordinary day.

One of those overlooked opportunities is verbal appreciation, particularly at work. Someone helps you, covers something for you, makes your day easier, and because everyone’s busy, it’s easy to move straight on to whatever’s next without acknowledging it. I’ve noticed that in myself too. We sometimes assume people know we appreciate them, but there’s something different about actually saying it. Telling a colleague, thank you, you really helped me today, costs almost nothing, but it lets them know their effort wasn’t invisible. Psychologically, this matters more than it sounds. Feeling appreciated has been linked to a stronger sense of belonging and reduced stress, and expressing genuine gratitude tends to strengthen the relationship between the two people involved, not just the mood of the person receiving it. It is a good deed that works in both directions.

Good deeds become slightly more complicated with strangers, of course, since there is no relationship to rely on and no obligation to fulfil, just a choice to be considerate. Even something like being a courteous driver has become part of my own thinking here. We spend so much time surrounded by complete strangers on the road, each absorbed in their own deadlines and frustrations, with no idea what kind of day the person beside us is having. That doesn’t mean becoming an endlessly patient saint behind the wheel. But there is a real choice in how much hostility we bring into an interaction that could otherwise stay entirely neutral. Sometimes a good deed is simply deciding that another person’s mistake doesn’t need to become your anger. There are bigger, more structured ways of practising this too. Volunteering, soup kitchens, beach clean ups, reading with children, supporting a local organisation, fundraising or contributing financially can all be meaningful ways of turning concern into action. I’ve also become particularly interested in a quieter form of this, supporting people who are already doing good work within their own communities. Sometimes a good deed isn’t about leading everything yourself. Sometimes it’s recognising someone else’s effort and helping them continue it.

It helps, at this point, to separate a few terms that tend to get used interchangeably. A good deed is an action. Kindness is closer to an attitude or disposition that often produces good deeds. Compassion involves noticing another person’s suffering and responding with care, which may or may not lead to a concrete act. Altruism refers to helping someone at a cost to yourself, regardless of the motive behind it. In everyday life these overlap constantly. You might notice a colleague is struggling, feel concern for them, which is compassion, and then offer to help with their workload, which becomes a good deed. If helping requires you to give up your lunch break or take on extra pressure, it edges into altruism too. I find this distinction useful because it reminds us that a good deed isn’t simply about being a nice person in the abstract. It involves attention, choice and behaviour. You can feel compassion all day and never turn it into anything. A good deed is what happens when that feeling becomes an action, however small.

There is a tendency to think of good deeds as something soft and purely emotional, but there is an interesting psychological side to it too. Research into prosocial behaviour has explored its relationship with wellbeing, social connection and meaning, and helping others is often associated with positive emotional experiences and reduced stress. There is even a term commonly used to describe the positive feeling people can experience after helping someone else, the helper’s high. But I don’t think good deeds should be reduced to a psychological hack for feeling better. That misses the point entirely. If I help somebody purely for the emotional reward afterwards, the act can start to feel transactional, another wellness strategy to optimize because it makes me feel good. For me, there is something far more meaningful in the fact that a good deed takes us outside of ourselves. We spend so much of life inside our own heads, thinking about our problems, our disappointments and the things that haven’t gone the way we wanted. Shifting attention toward somebody else’s experience offers a different perspective. Someone else needs help. Someone else needs encouragement. Someone else might simply need to know they’ve been noticed. Sometimes we have the capacity to give exactly that.

Our capacity for good deeds is also influenced by what is happening inside us. When we are stressed, overwhelmed or preoccupied, our attention can narrow, and we can become more focused on getting through our own day than noticing what someone else might need. That doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve become less caring. Sometimes our own emotional and practical resources are simply being used elsewhere. This is one reason I find it more useful to think of good deeds as a practice rather than a fixed personality trait. It means we can become more intentional about it. We can learn to notice more. We can become more aware of how we respond to people, recognise when stress is making us impatient, and choose differently when we have the capacity to do so. Nobody wakes up one morning and simply becomes a better person. Reflective practices such as journaling and mindfulness can help us notice our own behaviour and how we respond to other people, and that noticing is often the first good deed of the day, the one we do for ourselves before we can offer anything outward.

My journal has made me pay attention in a way I wasn’t before, and if anything, it makes me question myself more honestly rather than proving I’m a good person. Was I actually paying attention to other people today? Did I notice an opportunity to help? Did I express appreciation, or assume people already knew? Did I do something because I wanted to, or because I wanted recognition? Did I have enough capacity to give without completely neglecting myself?

That last question matters more than it might sound, because the same journal that asks me to record a good deed also asks me to record an act of self care, and I like that they sit beside each other. There is a version of doing good for others that becomes exhausting when we forget that we’re included in the equation too. We can become so focused on being useful, generous and available that eventually there is nothing left. That isn’t sustainable. Taking care of yourself doesn’t make you less generous. Sometimes it is exactly what allows you to show up for other people without resentment or the feeling that you are constantly sacrificing yourself. Boundaries are part of that too. A good deed does not require saying yes to everything, tolerating disrespect or ignoring your own needs. Sometimes the most useful thing you can do for another person is help them. Sometimes it is stepping back and letting them take responsibility for themselves.

Moving between very different environments has also made me notice how much our surroundings shape whether good deeds happen at all. There are places where people feel more connected to community because community is necessary, and places where independence is valued so highly that people can go through an entire day without a meaningful interaction with another person. Neither experience is simply good or bad, but I do think there is something we risk losing when efficiency becomes more important than humanity, particularly in a world where more interactions are automated, reduced to transactions or filtered through screens. Sometimes the simplest way of creating space for a good deed is remembering there is another person on the other side of the interaction. Not a username. Not a customer. Not the person slowing you down. A person, with a history, a difficult day, something they’re worried about, and probably a few things you’ll never know they’re carrying.

I don’t want good deeds to become something performed when there is an audience. I want them to quietly shape how I move through ordinary life. That doesn’t mean becoming some endlessly selfless version of myself. I can still have boundaries. Still say no. Still be frustrated. Still prioritize myself. A good deed doesn’t require being endlessly available. The riots taught me what collective good deeds look like when people have no choice but to come together. My upbringing taught me what generosity can look like when people don’t have much to give. My work and volunteering have shown me what happens when you sit close enough to other people’s struggles to realise how much everyone is carrying. And my journal has taught me something simpler still. I don’t have to wait for the next big moment. There are opportunities for a good deed scattered throughout an ordinary day. Sometimes I notice them. Sometimes I don’t. The point, for me, is to keep getting better at noticing.

Maybe changing the world isn’t always about doing something extraordinary. Maybe sometimes it is about making sure the person who crosses your path today leaves the interaction feeling a little more seen than they did before. Perhaps that’s a good enough place to start.

Mind Over Matter.

Disclaimer: This article is for general psychoeducational and informational purposes only. It reflects personal experiences and perspectives and is not a substitute for individual counselling, psychological assessment, diagnosis, or treatment. Where personal experiences are shared, identifying details have been changed or omitted to protect privacy.

DIGITAL DETOX

DIGITAL DETOX

by Kirsten Rossouw ♥ 1 Comment

Mind Over Matter Psych Talks | Season 1 Episode 3 | Written Reflection

Technology has become so deeply woven into everyday life that it can be difficult to recognise where its usefulness ends and our dependence on it begins. We use our phones to work, communicate, navigate, entertain ourselves, keep up with people we care about and fill the small spaces between everything else, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with any of that. Much of modern life would be considerably harder without it. The concern begins when being connected becomes our default state.

A digital detox is often presented as simply spending less time on your phone, deleting social media, or taking a break from the internet, and while those things can help, the idea becomes more interesting once you look beyond screen time itself. Our relationship with technology can reveal something about our attention, our habits, our relationships, and sometimes even the things we’re trying not to sit with. I became far more aware of this during COVID, when I returned home from America and found myself spending an enormous amount of time on my laptop and phone, our routines and access to the outside world both having shifted, technology becoming one of the main ways we kept working, communicating and entertaining ourselves.

But there was another experience that shifted my thinking on this more directly: load shedding. When the electricity went off, everything stopped. The Wi-Fi disappeared, the television went quiet, and suddenly the devices that normally occupied our attention simply weren’t available. What happened next was surprisingly simple. We talked. We played cards and board games. We told stories, joked around, spent time together, and sometimes the electricity would return and nobody immediately went back to their phones. I loved those evenings, because they reminded me that connection existed long before constant access to a screen, and more importantly, they made me notice how quickly technology can occupy space that might otherwise belong to conversation, creativity, rest, or simply being together. There’s something revealing about what happens when the distraction gets removed for you, rather than by you.

I think about that when I remember growing up. We spent a lot of time outside, playing cricket, inventing games, finding ways to entertain ourselves. We got bored, and boredom wasn’t immediately solved by handing someone a device, it had to go somewhere instead, becoming imagination, becoming interaction, becoming something made up simply because there was nothing else to do. I saw this again with my younger brother. As older siblings we remembered growing up without the same level of technology, we made a conscious effort to recreate some of that for him, getting outside, football, cricket, swing ball, whatever kept him moving and engaged. The point was never to make technology the enemy. It was to make sure it wasn’t the only source of stimulation.

That distinction matters for children and screens, but it matters just as much for adults. We can become so accustomed to constant stimulation that quiet starts to feel uncomfortable. A few minutes waiting in a queue becomes an opportunity to scroll. Sitting alone becomes an opportunity to consume something. A quiet evening becomes something to fill. Over time, we can lose our tolerance for stillness without ever quite noticing it’s happening, which is part of why I think a digital detox is better understood as a form of intentionality than punishment. The aim isn’t necessarily removing technology from our lives. It’s becoming more conscious of the role it actually plays in them.

I started this in a very practical way, looking at my own screen time using the function built into my phone and recording the numbers honestly in my wellness journal, no rounding down, no softening the truth. If I’d spent three hours on my phone, I wrote three hours down. That honesty was useful, it’s very easy to insist you don’t spend that much time on your phone when you’ve never actually looked at the number. Seeing it in front of me made the behaviour far more tangible, and from there I began gradually reducing screen time, removing certain apps, and becoming more selective about what I let into my digital environment. That process taught me something important: not all screen time is the same. Using technology to meditate, listen to something meaningful, communicate with someone you care about or create something is different from opening an app out of boredom and staying there because the next piece of content is always waiting. The behaviour can look identical from the outside, you’re simply holding your phone, but the intention behind it is entirely different, which is where self-awareness starts to matter.

Sometimes reaching for our phones is just habit, the hand moves, the screen lights up, and we’re scrolling before we’ve consciously decided we wanted to be there. Other times the phone becomes a convenient way of avoiding an uncomfortable moment, boredom, loneliness, awkwardness, a difficult thought, or the simple feeling of not knowing what to do next. That doesn’t mean everyone who scrolls is avoiding something. It simply means our habits are worth noticing before automatically labelling them harmless or problematic. Social media adds another layer entirely, because we aren’t only consuming information, we’re consuming other people’s lives, their relationships, holidays, bodies, homes, careers and celebrations presented in their most shareable form, rarely the ordinary, complicated, unfinished parts underneath. The comparison that follows can become unfair without us ever consciously choosing to compare, our everyday reality placed next to someone else’s carefully selected highlight reel, quietly shaping what we think our own lives are supposed to look like, measured against people we don’t actually know using context we don’t actually have.

That’s one of the reasons I’ve become more selective about who I let into my own social media environment. I don’t feel obligated to maintain a connection simply because someone happens to have access to my profile, there’s a real difference between someone having access to you and someone having a meaningful relationship with you, and not everyone needs a window into your life. Digital boundaries are still boundaries. That can mean removing accounts that consistently leave you feeling inadequate or overwhelmed, turning off notifications, deciding your phone doesn’t belong in every conversation, or recognising that responding immediately isn’t the same thing as being available. Some of my most useful boundaries turned out to be very ordinary ones. My mornings begin with my own routine, yoga, journaling, meditation, before I let myself enter the digital world at all, giving my attention somewhere to belong to me before it becomes available to everyone else. I also use airplane mode when I want to be unavailable, there’s something different about choosing not to respond when you know the notifications simply can’t reach you in the first place. My partner and I have built similar boundaries around our time together, making space for stretches without phones, particularly in the evening, a walk or simply time spent together without both of us disappearing into separate screens, sometimes meditation music or natural sounds before bed instead of ending the day scrolling.

None of these things are particularly dramatic, and that’s partly the point. A healthier relationship with technology rarely comes from one grand gesture. It’s built through small, repeated decisions. Putting the phone away during a meal. Leaving it in another room while spending time with someone. Going for a walk without constantly checking it. Allowing yourself to sit through a few minutes of boredom. Turning off notifications that don’t need immediate attention. Keeping the first part of the morning screen-free. These small interruptions create space for something else to happen, and sometimes that something is simply noticing ourselves.

A digital detox, then, is less about how much technology we should use, and more about becoming aware of what technology is replacing. Are we replacing conversation with scrolling. Rest with stimulation. Boredom with entertainment. Presence with documentation. Our own progress with comparison. Those substitutions aren’t always conscious, but they can become habitual, and it matters particularly for sleep and physical wellbeing, hours of screen time leaving tired eyes, headaches and poor posture, but the issue isn’t only physical. If the last interaction of the day is an endless stream of information, other people’s opinions and notifications, we may never give ourselves much chance to mentally transition into rest. Sometimes switching off means finally letting the day actually end. The same principle applies with other people. Being physically present and being psychologically present aren’t always the same thing, someone can sit beside us while their attention is somewhere else entirely, and I think that’s one of the more subtle costs of constant connectivity. We can become very good at being everywhere except where we actually are.

A digital detox doesn’t have to mean rejecting technology. What matters is whether we remain intentional about the relationship. For me that’s meant paying attention to my own behaviour rather than building rules I expect everyone else to follow, the screen time experiment, removing certain apps, creating device-free time, protecting my mornings, becoming more selective online, all ways of asking myself what kind of relationship I actually want with technology. That relationship will probably keep changing, our circumstances change, our work changes, our relationships change, technology itself changes, and what matters is keeping enough self-awareness to notice when a habit that was once useful has started taking up more space than we meant to give it. Perhaps that’s the real purpose of a digital detox. Not proving we can live without our phones. Not feeling guilty for using technology. Not another set of wellness rules to follow. But creating enough distance from our devices to notice what we’ve been giving our attention to, what we’ve been missing, and what we might want to make space for again. Sometimes that space becomes a conversation. Sometimes it becomes creativity. Sometimes it’s simply boredom, or time with someone we love, or a quiet moment with nothing demanding our attention at all. I think we need those moments. Our lives are happening outside the screen too.

Mind Over Matter.

Disclaimer: This article is for general psychoeducational and informational purposes only. It reflects personal experiences and perspectives and is not a substitute for individual counselling, psychological assessment, diagnosis, or treatment. Where personal experiences are shared, identifying details have been changed or omitted to protect privacy.

LOVE LANGUAGES 

LOVE LANGUAGES 

by Kirsten Rossouw ♥ 2 Comments

Mind Over Matter Psych Talks | Season 1 Episode 2 | Written Reflection

We often assume that loving someone should be simple. If I love you, surely you know that I love you, surely the things I do, the way I show up, the things I say, should make that obvious. But love has a funny way of becoming complicated when two people are speaking entirely different emotional languages. We don’t all experience love the same way. What makes one person feel deeply cared for might barely register with another. One person might need to hear that you’re proud of them, while another feels it far more strongly when you put your phone away and give them your undivided attention. Someone else might feel most appreciated when you notice they’ve had a long week and quietly take something off their plate. None of these people are necessarily asking for more love. They may simply be recognising it differently.

This is where Dr Gary Chapman’s idea of the five love languages offers a useful way of looking at relationships. Words of affirmation, quality time, physical touch, acts of service and receiving gifts describe some of the different ways people may prefer to experience affection and appreciation. But the more interesting part isn’t figuring out which category you personally fall into. It’s recognising that the way you naturally give love may not be the way the person you love naturally receives it. We can be doing everything we think we should be doing and still somehow miss each other entirely.

Take words, for example. A sincere compliment, a kind message, simply telling someone you appreciate them, can mean an enormous amount to someone who connects strongly with verbal affection. But there’s a difference between saying something nice and making someone feel seen. The more meaningful words are usually the ones that show you’ve actually been paying attention. Instead of simply saying you’re amazing, perhaps you tell someone exactly what you admire about them, acknowledge the specific effort they’ve made, remind them of a strength they may have forgotten they had. It’s the difference between speaking and communicating.

That same idea of attention runs through quality time. In a world where our focus is constantly divided between phones, work, notifications and everything else competing for it, being fully present with another person becomes one of the more meaningful things we can offer someone. Quality time doesn’t have to be elaborate, a walk, cooking together, a drive, sitting on the beach, or simply finding a stretch of the day where you’re not distracted by everything else. For me, quality time is something I particularly value, and one of the ways my partner and I practise it is by deliberately making space for time without technology, a moment in the day where we’re completely present with each other, often a walk or simply doing something together without phones becoming a third person in the relationship. It isn’t necessarily about doing something extraordinary. It’s the consistency of creating that space that makes it meaningful.

My partner’s love language is different, physical touch matters particularly to him, in the quieter sense of affection, playing with his hair, a back scratch, offering physical closeness at the end of the day. These things might seem small, but because I know they’re meaningful to him, they’ve become part of how I intentionally show up for him. And this is where I think the real work of understanding love languages begins. It would be very easy for me to simply give love in the way that feels most natural to me, if quality time is what makes me feel loved, I could assume spending time together should automatically make my partner feel the same way. But relationships don’t actually work like that. Sometimes loving someone well means stepping outside your own default setting, asking what makes this person feel loved rather than only asking how you like to be loved. That requires a little selflessness, paying attention to another person’s emotional world and making an effort to meet them there, even when their preferred way of receiving love isn’t naturally your own.

That doesn’t mean abandoning your own needs, though. Healthy relationships involve give and take, my partner knows quality time matters to me just as I know physical affection matters to him, and we both make an effort to speak to each other’s needs rather than expecting the other to simply figure it out. That’s the compromise, and it’s also why I don’t think love languages should become rigid, fixed labels. We aren’t five neat categories walking around in relationships. Our needs change, life changes us. What someone needs from you during a stressful period may not be what they need when life feels calm, a new job, a difficult season, a major transition, or simply the accumulation of everyday stress, can all change the way someone wants to feel supported. So knowing someone’s love language isn’t really about learning a formula and ticking a box forever. It’s about staying curious. Ask. Notice. Pay attention to changes. Sometimes the person who normally wants quality time needs practical help because they’re overwhelmed. Sometimes someone who usually enjoys physical affection needs a little more verbal reassurance instead. Sometimes what someone needs simply isn’t what they needed six months ago, and we have to keep getting to know the people we love, again and again.

There’s something important to say about consistency here too. We can become so focused on making a particular date special, or planning the perfect surprise, that we forget how much of a relationship is actually built in the ordinary moments. The small things count. The message sent because you know they’re having a difficult day. The coffee made without being asked. The hug when they walk through the door. The ten minutes spent listening without checking your phone. The errand handled because you know they already have too much on their plate. These things might never make an impressive photograph, but relationships aren’t built from photographs. They’re built from repetition, from showing up, from the small reminders that say I know you, I see you, I remember what matters to you.

That’s also why the idea of love languages extends usefully beyond romantic relationships. We communicate with friends, family, colleagues and plenty of other people in our lives, and each of those relationships carries its own understanding of care and appreciation. Maybe a friend needs encouragement more than advice. Maybe a family member appreciates practical help over words. Maybe a colleague responds strongly to simply being acknowledged for their effort. We don’t have to reduce anyone to a category to become more thoughtful about how we communicate with them.

There’s also value in turning the question inward. How do I naturally show love. How do I prefer to receive it. Why does that particular form of affection mean so much to me. Sometimes the things we value most reveal something about our own experiences and the things we needed at different points in our lives, and understanding ourselves helps us communicate our needs directly instead of expecting other people to read our minds, just as understanding someone else helps us stop assuming our own way is the only way. Perhaps that’s the biggest lesson in all of this. Love isn’t simply about having good intentions, though intentions matter, it’s also about how those intentions actually get received. We can love someone deeply and still miss the mark entirely. We can give everything we know how to give while the other person is quietly waiting for something completely different.

The answer isn’t becoming perfect at loving. It’s becoming more attentive, stepping outside the default trap of only giving the kind of love we personally enjoy receiving, staying curious as circumstances change, noticing the small things rather than waiting for an occasion to make a grand gesture, asking instead of assuming, listening instead of guessing. It isn’t about keeping score. It’s about learning each other, because at the end of the day, love isn’t only about what we feel inside ourselves. It’s about what another person is actually able to feel from us. Sometimes loving someone well means stepping outside what comes naturally and learning to speak in a way they can genuinely hear. And maybe that’s where love becomes less about saying this is how I love, and more about asking how can I love you in a way you can actually feel.

Mind Over Matter.

Disclaimer: This article is for general psychoeducational and informational purposes only. It reflects personal experiences and perspectives and is not a substitute for individual counselling, psychological assessment, diagnosis, or treatment. Where personal experiences are shared, identifying details have been changed or omitted to protect privacy.

NAVIGATING FEAR

NAVIGATING FEAR

by Kirsten Rossouw ♥ 2 Comments

Mind Over Matter Psych Talks | Season 1 Episode 1 | Written Reflection

Fear has a way of quietly shaping the decisions we make. Sometimes it’s obvious, but often it hides behind procrastination, perfectionism, overthinking, avoidance, or the quiet belief that we simply aren’t ready yet. For a long time I thought the things holding me back were practical, that I needed more time, more preparation, more certainty, or perhaps a better idea. But once I started looking beneath the surface, I realised what was really holding me back was fear. Fear of failure. Fear of judgement. Fear of not being good enough. Fear of putting something into the world and discovering it might not turn out the way I imagined. Recognising that was uncomfortable, but it was also important, because before we can begin navigating fear, we first have to be willing to admit it’s there at all.

Fear doesn’t always announce itself as fear. Sometimes it looks like putting something off until tomorrow. Sometimes it looks like endlessly preparing without ever actually taking action. Sometimes it looks like perfectionism, convincing ourselves something needs to be flawless before it’s worth doing at all. Other times it looks like avoiding conversations, opportunities, decisions or experiences entirely, simply because we’re worried about what might happen. For me, one of the clearest signs was procrastination. Whenever there was something I wanted to do but felt uncertain about, I’d find other things to occupy my attention, because staying busy was easier than confronting the uncomfortable feeling underneath it. Eventually I realised avoidance was only giving me temporary relief. It wasn’t actually solving anything. The thing I was afraid of simply stayed there, waiting for me, which led to a harder question worth asking honestly: why was I so afraid of failing in the first place.

Our relationship with fear is often shaped by the messages we’ve absorbed throughout our lives. We learn, without necessarily choosing to, to associate achievement with worth, productivity with success, mistakes with inadequacy. We can become so accustomed to trying to get things right that the possibility of getting something wrong starts to feel overwhelming. Perfectionism makes this considerably harder, because when we believe something needs to be perfect before we even begin, we build impossible conditions for ourselves, and we may never feel ready enough to take the first step. And when we place too much weight on what other people might think, we start making decisions based on imagined judgement rather than our own actual values and desires, leaving us asking what if I fail before we’ve even given ourselves the chance to try.

One of the more important shifts I had to make was changing how I viewed failure itself. Instead of treating it as evidence that I was incapable, I started trying to see it as feedback. A failed attempt can still teach you something real, showing you what needs to change, what you need to learn, or what you might approach differently next time. I also had to give myself permission to fail. That doesn’t mean failure suddenly becomes enjoyable, or that we stop caring about outcomes altogether. It simply means accepting that failure is a real possibility whenever we choose to do something unfamiliar, challenging or meaningful. If we treat failure as something to be avoided at all costs, we risk avoiding growth right along with it.

One exercise that helped me was imagining the worst case scenario properly, rather than just fearing it vaguely. What was I actually afraid would happen. And if that thing happened, would I be able to recover. Would I still be myself. Would life continue. Would I eventually be okay. Often, when we let ourselves fully imagine the outcome we’re so afraid of, we discover it isn’t nearly as catastrophic as our minds had built it up to be. The fear may still be uncomfortable, but uncomfortable doesn’t automatically mean unbearable. Sometimes we don’t need to know that everything will work out perfectly. We simply need to know we can handle things if they don’t.

Understanding fear is only part of the process, though. At some point we have to actually practise moving through it, deliberately stepping outside our comfort zones, trying something unfamiliar, having a conversation we’ve been avoiding, starting something before we feel completely ready, allowing ourselves to be a beginner again. Every time we do something uncomfortable and discover we can handle it, we learn something real about ourselves, and we start to understand that fear doesn’t always mean stop. Sometimes fear simply means we’re doing something that actually matters to us.

The goal isn’t necessarily to become fearless. Fear is a normal human response, and there will always be situations that make us uncertain or uncomfortable. The goal is developing a different relationship with it, becoming curious rather than letting it make every decision for us. What is this fear actually trying to tell me. Where did it come from. Is this belief mine, or something I learned along the way. What am I avoiding. What would I do if I wasn’t so concerned about failing. And what’s one small step I could take today. We don’t have to confront every fear at once. Sometimes navigating fear is simply taking one small step and letting that step become evidence that we’re capable of moving forward at all.

Fear may still be there. We may still feel uncertain, still wonder what other people will think, still worry things won’t work out exactly as planned. But we can learn that fear doesn’t have to disappear before we move. Sometimes we simply have to learn how to move alongside it, because the opposite of fear isn’t necessarily courage without any fear at all. Sometimes courage is feeling afraid and choosing to take the next step anyway.

Mind Over Matter.

Disclaimer: This article is for general psychoeducational and informational purposes only. It reflects personal experiences and perspectives and is not a substitute for individual counselling, psychological assessment, diagnosis, or treatment. Where personal experiences are shared, identifying details have been changed or omitted to protect privacy.

CODEPENDENCY

CODEPENDENCY

by Kirsten Rossouw ♥ 4 Comments

The term “codependency” tends to be used loosely, often without much shared understanding of what it actually means. It has also become a source of debate, since dependency itself is a natural part of being human. We are inherently interconnected, relying on others in various ways for growth, support, and shared experience. Codependency, though, describes something different, a pattern that tends to develop within unhealthy rather than healthy relationships.

Codependency is often described as a circular dynamic, one that sustains both people involved. The “giver” is the person who needs to be needed, while the “taker” grows comfortable having their needs met, often at the giver’s expense. In simpler terms, it describes a pattern of reliance, whether mental, emotional, physical, or spiritual, on another person. It is not limited to romantic relationships and can develop with a parent, employer, or friend just as easily.

A person in the giver role often builds their sense of identity around helping others, feeling a persistent need to rescue or fix those around them, sometimes at real cost to their own needs. That one-sided pattern tends to provide a sense of worth and validation, with attention consistently directed outward rather than inward. Over time, taking on responsibility for someone else’s happiness can lead to resentment, alongside a fear of being alone that keeps the pattern in place, since independence can feel unfamiliar or even frightening. Both people, in a sense, end up relying on the dynamic to feel whole.

People experiencing codependency often struggle to recognise their own inherent value, placing their worth instead on an outsized sense of responsibility for others. Love and pity can become tangled together, intensifying the urge to rescue, which can lead to poor boundaries, people pleasing, and, in some cases, a pattern of tolerating harmful behaviour because the fear of being alone outweighs the discomfort of staying.

So why does this pattern develop? Codependency is often rooted in childhood and shaped by learned behaviour. Children growing up in households where their own needs went unmet may take on caretaking roles well beyond their years, particularly in homes affected by addiction or chronic instability, managing responsibilities that should not have been theirs to carry. In some cases, children in difficult or abusive homes learn to protect or manage a parent’s emotions, effectively becoming a confidant rather than a child, learning early on to set aside their own needs and suppress their emotions, which can affect self-esteem well into adulthood. These patterns can function as a form of adaptation and survival in childhood, but they generally need to be recognised and unlearned later in life to avoid repeating them in adult relationships.

Other environments, particularly those where children are given little independence or autonomy in decision making, can lay similar groundwork, fostering a sense that life is something to be managed by others rather than shaped for oneself.

Addressing codependent patterns starts with understanding where and why they developed. Identifying the root cause is the first step, often supported by therapy, which can help someone recognise and process emotions that may have been suppressed for a long time. Developing healthy boundaries is central to this work, including learning to say no, something that does not come easily to many people but is a necessary part of protecting one’s own wellbeing.

Another helpful shift is moving from “saving” to “supporting.” Saving involves solving someone else’s problems for them; supporting means encouraging them to work through those problems themselves. Growth tends to come from navigating one’s own challenges, and being consistently rescued can limit that process. It is also worth noting that not every problem can be resolved through support alone; some situations genuinely call for professional help, such as therapy or a structured recovery programme. Making space for one’s own needs and self-care is equally important in shifting away from codependent patterns.

Interdependency offers a healthier alternative. In an interdependent relationship, both people remain autonomous individuals who choose to rely on one another without losing their own sense of self. Their lives are genuinely intertwined, but neither feels solely responsible for fulfilling the other’s needs, dreams, or happiness. Each person is able to navigate their own emotions without hiding or sacrificing parts of themselves for the relationship. This dynamic tends to produce healthier, more sustainable relationships, and understanding the distinction between codependency and interdependency is often the first step towards building them.

Mind Over Matter.

Disclaimer: This article is shared for general psychoeducational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute professional psychological, medical, or counselling advice, and is not a substitute for assessment, diagnosis, or treatment by a qualified mental health professional. If anything in this article raises concerns about your own wellbeing or that of someone you know, please reach out to a registered counsellor, psychologist, or your local emergency and crisis services. Where personal experiences are shared, names and identifying details have been omitted or changed to protect the privacy of those involved.

SELF-LOVE

SELF-LOVE

by Kirsten Rossouw ♥ 1 Comment

Valentine’s Day may have come and gone, but love, in its various forms, is worth revisiting well beyond the date on the calendar, particularly the love we offer ourselves rather than the love we expect from others.

The day tends to prompt two fairly different responses: warmth and affection for some, and a certain dread for others, whether due to the absence of romantic love or scepticism about how the day is typically marked, with its focus on gifts and gestures. There is undeniably a degree of commercialism attached to it, but there is also a more meaningful message worth reflecting on beneath that.

The pressure to find a partner around this time can create the impression that love, by definition, requires another person. In doing so, we tend to overlook the relationship we will have for the whole of our lives: the one with ourselves.

Before we can meaningfully give or receive love from others, it helps to examine the love we hold for ourselves first. We place enormous value on how we show up in our relationships and friendships, and comparatively little on how we relate to ourselves, even though that relationship underpins all the others.

We often carry an idealised sense of what love should look like, and when we fall short of offering that standard to ourselves, we can end up disappointed when others do not meet it either. Relationships with others are, in many respects, complementary to the relationship we have with ourselves, not a substitute for it.

Self-love, as I understand it, is more than simply telling yourself you are worthy of love. It is about how you regard and hold yourself: the standard of respect and care you extend to your own wellbeing, and your ability to acknowledge both your strengths and your limitations honestly. It is not a constant, unwavering sense of feeling good; it is a dynamic, ongoing practice, shaped as much by the actions we take towards our own growth as by how we feel in any given moment.

Self-love involves genuinely understanding who you are and being comfortable in that understanding. It means treating yourself with patience and kindness, allowing space for difficult emotions like sadness or frustration, while still responding to yourself with compassion rather than harsh judgement. It means accepting mistakes as part of being human, learning from them rather than being defined by them.

Human beings are, by nature, complex and often messy, and it would be unrealistic to expect a life free of struggle. Self-love means continuing to show up for yourself regardless, replacing self-criticism with a more constructive inner voice, and cultivating a genuinely positive relationship with yourself. Taking responsibility for your own wellbeing, your boundaries, and the energy you bring into your relationships tends to clarify who genuinely matches that energy in return. Understanding your own worth often makes it easier to recognise when others do too. In many ways, the love you offer yourself sets the standard for the love you come to expect from others. It also involves making peace with your imperfections, choosing to accept yourself even in more difficult moments.

Understanding this in theory and practising it consistently are two different things. So where might one begin?

Start by making it a daily practice rather than an occasional one. Begin the day by acknowledging something you are genuinely proud of. Work on maintaining healthy boundaries, and be mindful of the energy you allow into your life. Prioritise your own needs and goals, and try not to compromise your values for the sake of others. Trust your own judgement, and make space for rest, movement, and good nutrition as part of caring for both mind and body. Stay aware of where you are in your own journey, and work on softening your inner critic over time. Practise forgiving yourself, and let go of what no longer serves you.

Self-love is, in many ways, the foundation everything else is built on. It is worth figuring out what genuinely supports your own sense of self-worth, and returning to that practice consistently. Any love that follows from others is simply an addition to a life already grounded in it.

Mind Over Matter.

Disclaimer: This article is shared for general psychoeducational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute professional psychological, medical, or counselling advice, and is not a substitute for assessment, diagnosis, or treatment by a qualified mental health professional. If anything in this article raises concerns about your own wellbeing or that of someone you know, please reach out to a registered counsellor, psychologist, or your local emergency and crisis services. Where personal experiences are shared, names and identifying details have been omitted or changed to protect the privacy of those involved.

NEW YEAR, NEW YOU

NEW YEAR, NEW YOU

by Kirsten Rossouw ♥ 2 Comments

It is never too late to revisit our new year resolutions and step back from the unrealistic expectations many of us place on ourselves at the start of each year.

We tend to move into January with good intentions, often after a festive season marked by indulgence, which can leave many of us feeling that some kind of reset, physically and otherwise, is in order. The new year offers what psychologists sometimes call a “fresh start effect,” the sense of being handed a blank slate. That framing can be genuinely comforting, allowing us to psychologically separate past mistakes from the person we hope to become. We tend to think of our lives in chapters, so a clear marker like New Year offers a natural, appealing opportunity to begin again.

That said, even with the optimism a new year brings, turning over a new leaf comes with its own pressures. Impatience with the pace of change often leads us to set goals that are too vague or too large from the outset: work harder, get a promotion, eat better, drink less, exercise more.

The first issue with goals like these is that they tend to focus almost entirely on appearance, career, or personal achievement, with very little attention paid to mental or emotional wellbeing. It is often easier to change how we look than to look inward, partly because external change tends to be noticed and reinforced by others, which can be a strange but understandable motivator.

The second issue is a lack of specificity. Broad, ambitious goals can feel daunting simply because it is unclear where to begin, and many resolutions quietly fade within a few weeks as a result.

The third issue tends to surface once we start to fall short of a goal: the negative self-talk that follows. As soon as we sense ourselves drifting from what we set out to do, many of us respond with harsh self-criticism rather than encouragement, which can affect mental health more than the missed goal itself. We are often our own harshest critics, and the disappointment of an unmet goal can leave us feeling worse than before we set it, reinforcing a belief that change simply is not possible for us. This can build into a fairly cynical view of resolutions altogether, one that resets, largely unchanged, the following year.

So how might we approach this differently?

Start by considering not just physical or career related goals, but the person you would like to become more broadly, including how you communicate with others, how kindly you treat yourself, and how well you look after your own wellbeing. A goal that only addresses the external misses an important part of the picture.

Specificity matters. If you want to reduce screen time, decide in advance what will replace it. If better sleep is the goal, look at building a realistic nightly routine. If the goal involves changing your relationship with alcohol, consider whether a gradual reduction might be more sustainable than stopping altogether. Break larger goals into smaller, concrete steps, with clear detail on how, when, and where you intend to work towards them. This tends to make goals feel achievable rather than distant, and more personally meaningful as a result. Building in small rewards or milestones along the way can help sustain motivation and make the process feel less like a chore.

It also helps to work on reframing negative self-talk and reducing comparison with others. Speak to yourself the way you would speak to someone you care about, and revisit a goal that feels unmanageable rather than abandoning it outright; adjusting a goal is not the same as giving up on it. Stay focused on your own progress rather than measuring it against someone else’s, since their goals, like yours, are shaped by their own circumstances and needs.

Finally, allow room for setbacks, and extend yourself the same forgiveness you would offer a friend. Where a goal falls short, it is worth asking what might need to change, in the goal itself or in the approach, rather than treating the shortfall as a verdict on your character. Progress is rarely a straight line, and even falling short of a goal usually means you have moved closer to it than where you started.

Mind Over Matter.

Disclaimer: This article is shared for general psychoeducational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute professional psychological, medical, or counselling advice, and is not a substitute for assessment, diagnosis, or treatment by a qualified mental health professional. If anything in this article raises concerns about your own wellbeing or that of someone you know, please reach out to a registered counsellor, psychologist, or your local emergency and crisis services. Where personal experiences are shared, names and identifying details have been omitted or changed to protect the privacy of those involved.