Mental health is saying slow down

Having anxiety and depression was the worst thing that ever happened to me, and at the time I didn’t see how things could ever get better. But I made it through and I’m glad to be the person I am now – definitely with more self-knowledge and more compassion for others.

Clinical psychologists Dr Elliot Bell and Kirsty Louden-Bell, my collaborators in this book, tell us that one way to make ourselves feel better is to be grateful and to do things for other people – this is part of what is called “positive psychology”. Wow. That’s really radical advice because it goes against the way society pushes us – to want more all the time, and to be so busy we don’t have time to look outside our own little lives.