A lot has got worse - but sometimes it’s tolerable. And today I got a new hairdryer ☺️

It’s dark outside.

Offering Compline this night for those who are listening to the hum of the house and feeling everything at once. May God steady what rises, and grant you rest.

My mum: I don’t think your therapy is working, they’re meant to make you happier and focus on the positive things. Also my mum: *tells me that Elon Musk is causing the storms in Spain by Starlink (?) from America because he doesn’t like the government* But jeez, I’m the pessimist here.

It says a lot about the various difficulties of work, parenting, and therapy when my ‘stress score’ according to my watch was at its lowest in an interview I just had (I got through 😅)

Introduced my therapist to the music of Lola Young today. open.spotify.com/track/7ngxyV...

Unexpected perks of being in MIU with a poorly child: getting to watch the Winter Olympics rather than working this morning.

Any tips to deal with PTSD flashbacks? I’m really struggling with this chest infection / the feeling of shortness of breath reminding me of having sepsis. I presume when I get better it’ll go but it’s inconvenient when driving or trying to sleep or doing any normal things right now 😞

I love having children 10/10 recommend.

Seminar reading tonight ‘the economic problems of masochism’ Me: *offers to present the whole paper, because I’ve been ill for the last two weeks* Also me: *runs to the doctors surgery to discover the week I decided to start couch to 5k I have suspected pneumonia*

Current reading.

Cheerfully drinking my morning coffee with a white chocolate finger as a straw, and my husband looks over and for a second thinks that I have a rolled up banknote in my nose. Chocolate fingers make the best straws ever is a hill I will die on.

Just Freud things.

Me: I’m here because a few friends and my therapist have said I should see my GP about my mental health. The unexpected outcome:

The fun thing about my mother is that she has no money at all and can’t afford to heat her shack or eat, and I often have to give her extra cash above the normal monthly amount I give her. Which is fine, except she’s also the reason for my ridiculous monthly therapy bill 😅

Played a board game with the kids where I had to pretend to eat sarcastically. ‘Gee, this is, like, the best food ever’ ‘Oh great, yummy’ My son declares that I am clearly acting ‘gratefully’. I love his optimism and hope he never bloody changes 🥰

Who said romance is dead? (Ten years ago, I married a physicist. He hasn’t changed 😅)

Choose your fighter:

If you're looking for a sign to switch careers: this is the sign.

Eldest: I’ve found a way to help [toddler] calm down. I’m getting him to talk to [cat] about his dream last night. Husband: when you said you wanted to be a cat psychologist I didn’t realise you meant train cats to become psychoanalysts Eldest: what’s a psychoanalyst? Husband: *describes* …

TIL: I am an otter.

‘I cry a lot but I am so productive, it's an art…’

I’ve been doing it wrong all these years! Just saying “I need tires for a 2019 Honda Odyssey” to the guy at the tire store counter, like a rube, instead of stealing all my writer friends’ IP and uploading my family photos to the CSAM/revenge porn machine.

I’m poorly and trying to ‘max the battle pass’ on Fortnite. What a fantastic set list of songs (mostly from my youth). It’s like the Fortnite developers are all millennials or something 😅

Trying to decide between doing clinical training to work with adults or children. A question to all therapists: what made you choose to work with the population you do?

I have proof that I was actually clever, about twelve years ago. 😆

When you bounce down the stairs after a day of playing video games and your husband is in a Zoom call, then his colleague asks if you’re one of his kids 🙃 I’m 5”2 but definitely a grown up!

My therapist is away this week and my husband is in London on Wednesday. I clearly need to find someone else to bug on my two hour lunch break, otherwise I’ll end up live tweeting my next Freud reading 😅

Happy days (seminar on First Encounters background bookshelves)

When you ask your old tutor to read your paper and if possible suggest bits to remove to get the word count down and instead get given so much more to add in 🙈 But at least in general she liked it!

Felt like a good day to reread Mourning and Melancholia… ‘Reality-testing has shown that the loved object no longer exists, and it proceeds to demand that all libido shall be withdrawn from its attachments to that object. This demand…

The more time I spend on Instagram, which seems to like feeding me relationship advice like ‘you’re avoidant and can fix it this way’ or ‘anxiously attached? Stop scrolling and start paying!’ all I can do is envisage Mary Ainsworth rolling in her grave.

‘All relationships disappoint us. The question is: is it bearable?’ Sage advice from the seminar leader tonight.

‘You think like me and that’s why I think you like me’ - supervision, a well-needed echo chamber 🥰

Freud, on penis envy… ‘A little girl behaves differently. She makes her judgement and her decision in a flash. She has seen it and knows that she is without it and wants to have it.’ 🙃

Weird moment when my eight year old, reading Bart Simpson’s Guide To Life, asked me who The Flintstones are… and the best way I had to introduce them was by singing this song: youtu.be/lZAqlx_9lv0?...

From my back door this morning - makes the yellow weather warning almost worth it.

A 17-year-old who grew up in foster care has been named Thames Valley Police's cadet of 2025. www.bbc.com/news/article...

He IS happy to see me! And he said my paper is ‘interesting ++++++’ (where the pluses included stuff like challenging and provocative 😅)

Recently after every break, my psychoanalytic psychotherapist seems super happy to see me with a big smile. I’m 50/50 on whether he’s in love with me or was worried I’d have killed myself in the break. This may be a microcosm of the way I relate to men 🫣

Wordle 1,659 3/6* 🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜ 🟨🟨⬜🟨🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 😅 Join my leaderboard in The New York Times Games app. nytimes.onelink.me/IM32/x0drlyh3

One thing I’ve been thinking of recently is how much I miss blogs. Like social media is great and all, but I miss the days of RSS, and making time to read and digest what people you liked really wanted to say. Endless AI generated slop has nothing on real people 🙃 I miss real people.

I had no idea this was happening and I now need more time to watch YouTube! 😍 www.theguardian.com/science/2026...

Evening #TheTraitors crew.

I have some talents. Useless ones, like knowing how many sausage rolls Greggs sells a week or how many driving tests are passed first time 🙃

My friend: that was the day I knew we’d be friends, because you took off your top and gave me a shot of gin. (First play date with a kid who covered my office in 16kg of flour, seven years ago 😅)

This happened near me. Please check your smoke alarms now. And every week. If you haven’t got them or they don’t work, your local fire brigade will do a ‘safe and well’ check and fit heat detectors, smoke alarms, etc for free. Please take advantage of the service. www.gofundme.com/f/helping-re...

I don’t often talk about ‘breaking the cycle’ of parenting fuck ups because god knows I fuck up a lot myself but today my youngest did not want to go into the theatre so we sat in the cafe and video called my mum - she said he should feel bad because I wanted to watch the play, and that I should…

Klein on the task of psychoanalysis: ‘It must enable him to be really willing only to analyse and not to wish to mould and direct the minds of his patients.’

- Benjamin Zephaniah