Understanding Anger: Managing and Reducing Unnecessary Outbursts

Anger is a natural human emotion that we all experience from time to time. It can arise due to various triggers, such as frustration, injustice, or feeling threatened. While anger can be a valid response, it is essential to learn how to manage and reduce unnecessary anger. [Read more…]

5 Tips to Reduce Anxiety

Unlike fear, anxiety is all about perceived future based threats – the ‘what-ifs’ that we all experience from time to time. Anxiety tells us to fight or run (which, if we are under threat, would be the right thing to do!) however, paradoxically, if the anxiety alarm rings when it doesn’t need to and we respond, we actually reinforce it. [Read more…]

Lockdown Cabin Fever: Life in a Pandemic

At the time of writing, much of the planet is facing a ‘second-wave’ of COVID-19. The global economy is being challenged, the poor are getting poorer, the sick, sicker, and all our perceptions of thinking we have any level of ‘control’ are being fractured. But, is the outlook really all doom and gloom?

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Anxiety… Not today, thank you!

In this powerful piece, our in-house therapist, Penni Osborn shines a light on the origins of anxiety, highlights ways in which anxiety can manifest and offers suggestions on how symptoms can be managed.


Now, more than ever, anxiety is making its stomach-churning self known. In these times of such uncertainty, it has latched onto our fear receptors and is making even those with the strongest of constitutions struggle with its message of impending doom. So, what can be done? How can we manage something that makes us feel, at times, so helpless and afraid? [Read more…]

How Walking Can Help Manage Our Stress Levels

We welcome back Rebecca Brown, a translator and avid traveller, a book worm and horror flick enthusiast. Her job has given her the amazing opportunity to travel to dozens of countries around the world, and then write about them on Rough Draft. This time around, Rebecca covers how walking can help us to manage our stress levels.


The physical effects of walking are well known to us all – it increases our cardiorespiratory fitness, bone and muscle strength, as well as endurance. At the same time, walking contributes to fat reduction and better weight management, thus reducing the risk of many chronic diseases.

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Can Mindfulness Keep Us Safe From COVID-19?

Huge thanks to our resident guest author, Tim. In this piece, he opens up for discussion and consideration the hot topic of COVID-19 and the impact on our wellbeing the global shutdown can create.


If you’re hoping for a universal aspirin then it’s a pretty daft question, really, because it can and it can’t. It can’t stop you from becoming infected with COVID-19, nor can it mitigate the infection should we be unlucky enough to contract it. But we can look at the things we can do mindfully to make our lives easier.

By staying mindful we can keep ourselves level headed and calm. [Read more…]

Make 2019 the year you stop waiting for it to be okay!

As another year ends, we can be grateful.

Some, however, will not be feeling a desire to express gratitude as 2018 was yet another year of psychological pain and turbulence. They wonder if these symptoms will ever leave – and peace and non-suffering will ever come to them.

We know there will always be suffering but to what extent, is in our own hands. The world may often be chaotic, but we can remain separate from that chaos if we elect to skilfully and mindfully observe more, and judge less.

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