Do you remember when social distancing became physical distancing? Earlier this year, to help stop the spread of COVID-19, governments started telling people to “shelter in place”, practice “social distancing” and so on. Why did the pandemic language change as time went on? Language changes in response to changing circumstances Firstly, it wasn’t accurate. We were encouraged to limit face-to-face interactions, not social interactions via phone or Zoom. Shelter in place typica

As of today, there have been over 19 million posts on Instagram alone with the stay safe hashtag. As the world begins to move past lockdown, the messages are changing. What’s the problem with change and changing messages? It takes our brains and bodies time to catch up. How your brain is set up to protect you Your brain is involved in processing your experiences. One of the ways it processes experiences, and stores them for future use and information, is by using neural netwo

What are you scared of right now? When I ask clients or workshop participants that question, pretty much everybody tenses up and the automatic answer is “nothing”. As adults, we’re not used to talking about what scares us. It makes us feel vulnerable and exposed. As human beings, we all experience fear – it’s one of the things that’s helped us survive as a species. Our brains are set up to automatically always be on the lookout for, and quickly respond to, anything that could

A friend of mine said to me the other day that we've had a few years' worth of change in a couple of months! Collectively we've had to adapt to new schedules, new ways of working, restricted movement, being isolated from most people and perhaps spending more time than usual with those in our household. Thankfully there are signs that the situation related to #COVID19 is starting to improve in many parts of the world. There's a collective desire for things to "get back to norm