I'm a public speaker, who is very afraid of talking to strangers... How does THAT WORK? Well I'm excellent at being on stage or on camera, but put me in a networking meeting or a wedding where I know none of the other guests (or even sometimes social situations with some of my closest friends) and I'm an absolute WRECK. I'm also someone who challenges other people to face up to their fears and take ownership of stuff like this... so this is me PUBLICLY taking ownership of this. I'll be updating this story via Shorts so be sure to follow me on your prefered platform and maybe follow the hashtag ..read more

"I had to get out of a church that was like a cult" this sentence spoken very matter-of-factly was the start of a very interesting and bizarre conversation when I first met Rachel McDerby face to face. She gave me the cliff notes, invovling cultish behaviour in a church, running rehab centers with questionable ethics, an abusive ex and setting up a safe house and I had to stop her in her tracks. Because this was going to be one of those conversations I'd want to recreate for a podcast and never be able to do it justice compared to that unplanned chat. So that's what we did, we saved the detail ..read more

Is mental illness a diability? Well the short answer is YES! But it took me a LONG way to get to that short answer when answering for myself. If anyone else was to ask me if mental illness is a disability I would say "of course". But if they were to say "is YOUR mental illness a disability" then I would most likely have said no. There's many reasons for this. But the two I boil it down to are not wanting to detract from people with "genuine disabilities" and the other being a strong dollop of interalised stigma. It's no good me confronting these things in others if I am not to confront them in ..read more

A mental health podcaster talking to another mental health podcaster? What ever will they think of next. Tom Davies is the host of the Proper Mental Podcast, which is one of (if not the) highest ranking independent UK mental health podcast.  Having lived with his own mental health struggles he found that talking about it with other people was part of the path to recovery. So to make these conversations a guaranteed regular occurance he launched the Proper Mental Podcast, initially with a friend, but then after the friend leaving due to life commitments Tom decided he wasn't done with the ..read more

Accessibility in gaming is something many developers are keen to include (nowadays). This is often done by giving accessibility options within the game itself. Whether this be subtitles, audio description or high contrast visual modes or maybe by simplifying controls or offering a series of difficulty level modifiers. But what about where these adjustments aren't enough? Well this is where Special Effect come in. Not only do they cmapaign for more accessibility in games using some of the methods we have already mentionend, but they creative innovative technologies that offer new and game chang ..read more

Raynaud's syndrome is more common than you may think, which was a surprise t me because I first heard about it when I met Chelsea Lea MacColl around 5 years ago. Raynaud's is a condition where the person feels the cold in an intense manor. As we talked through it in this interview it became clear that there aren't many ways to explain the difference to a person without the condition of "feeling the cold a bit too much" and it making your life oftentimes a misery. The closest we got was hypothermia! In this interview Chelsea talks about the physical, emotional, mental and social effects of Rayn ..read more

Will Hawkins is a coach and a therapist. Coming from a background of physical training, he was interested in what's going on behind the scenes more. Undestanding a person's fears, their needs, their identity and their values. In this episode we talk a lot about emotional intelligence. Why it is important and what people can do to cultivate it. We discuss some of the things that hold a person back and how to generate motivation (or momentum) by tapping into the deeper cores of our identity ..read more

Life, just filterless. This is the motto of Lisa Jayne and the name of her business. Having struggled for many year with her own mental health  one of the areas she found comfort was in her dark sense of humour. Then when looking for clothing that reflected this she couldn't find what she was looking for, so she decided to make it! She now runs the fashion brand Life Just Filterless, which raises awareness of mental health, but also gives those of us with a darker sense of humour somthing to wear. This is however only just the begining because the medium to long term goals of the brand is ..read more

It's a big question, but I want to tackle it... are we programmed to be unhappy? The research in this one spans almost 300 years, staring with Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the hedonic treadmill, then heading to modern research by the likes of Anna Lembke and Andrew Huberman; all via the Tocqueville Paradox. Each of these pices of research presents a stacked deck, where genuine lasting happiness is a fleeting thing. But is the data the truth? And more importantly... are we bound by it? Link to the Huberman Lab article mentioned at the end: https://hubermanlab.com/tools-to-manage-dopamine-and-impro ..read more

Vennie Kocsis spent her life from 3 until 14 living in a compound as a member of a cult. Struggling with segregation from the rest of the world on the outside, but also separation from her family on the inside; she lived a life that was always filtered through fear. You wouldn't think so listening to her today but she didn't learn about normal relationships, normal friendships and normal boundaries until she got out. In fact she didn't have any degree of a normal education either and was thrust into this in her mid teens needing to adapt very quickly. Nowadays she is an author, a speaker, a po ..read more