Tag Archives: anxiety

When windows get smashed

The window of tolerance after Cyclone Gabrielle is shifting. Here’s what it means for response and recovery.  In Dan Siegel’s book, The Developing Mind, he describes how everyone has a range of intensities of emotional experience that they can comfortably experience, process and integrate. This is the ‘window of tolerance’, and it varies widely. For […]

Omicron incoming

Prepare for surging case numbers over the next days to come. It will take some time for us to come to terms with this changing reality. Already, people are coming forward to be tested in greater numbers in Auckland – this will probably increase the number of identified cases in days to come. What can […]

Omicron community outbreak in New Zealand

We are moving from a place of what people can call a place of relative safe certainty to, hopefully, a place of safe ‘uncertainty’ again. We know what we can do to remain safer & slow down & reduce the clinical burden on people, the health system & containing outbreaks Understand that you have three […]

Omicron: What Now?

Omicron is making its way around the world, and this is hard. Hard for everyone who has been looking forward to engaging with life again, everyone who is tired, and everyone who just wishes this was over. I hear you, I see you. It is difficult to think about this, but we must. We won’t […]

The New Covid Protection Framework: Initial Thoughts

The Prime Minister outlined the new Covid Protection Framework this morning. Here are some of the key points from a psychological point of view Outlining the new structure and how it will work will be helpful for most people. And it clear that the goal is to carry on vaccinating at speed and scale to […]

​​We have complex feelings about the pandemic response right now. Here’s why.

Impending doom and an overwhelming sense of grief for all that we may have lost, even as the pandemic has played out over the last 20 months in New Zealand. This is the gist of just some conversations and expressions I’ve heard over the past few days.  Why are we feeling like this? Why now? […]

One degree of separation: New Zealand’s Superpower and Covid-19 Vulnerability

We’ve all experienced the superpower. You meet someone and it turns out you both know someone in common. It can happen anywhere, in New Zealand, and even around the world when we travel. And it usually happens pretty early in the conversation too. It’s the social glue that is our superpower It brings us joy, […]

Get the vaccine to get on with life

The uncertainty equation is changing. Before, we had the strategy of elimination and the comfort of the original, simple, Alert Level system. You’ve heard it before, and I’ll say it again: Delta is changing all this. We know that secondary stressors – the effects of all that we do to keep the primary threat (Covid-19) […]

When the trajectory changes again. And again.

In preparing for the next stage of the pandemic, there is a risk that we project what we wish to see for our futures, what we hope and desire, into a physical world that doesn’t care. It’s not that it doesn’t want to care: it can’t. The coronavirus pandemic doesn’t have feelings or desires, hates […]

Do the mahi, get the treats

With Auckland at Level 3 and Covid-19 cases still in the community, our behaviour is more important than ever in staying on top of the spread of the virus. What we choose to do *does* make a difference. What YOU do makes a difference If you hate lockdowns and you want to have a glorious […]