I left boarding school carrying not just my school blazer and a polished sense of privilege but also a deep well of shame, confusion, and a fractured sense of self. On the surface, I appeared to be articulate, capable, and respectable. Inside, I bore the marks of humiliation, the kind that blurs discipline with worthlessness, strength with cruelty, and authority with moral truth.

For years, I didn’t fully grasp the depth of this wound. Like many men from similar backgrounds, I worked hard, sought success, and took pride in my independence. I learned to appear competent and confident. But beneath it all was a sort of ache, a dislocation within the nervous system. Something in me recoiled from intimacy and bristled at the thought of vulnerability. I knew how to dominate a therapy room, but I didn't know how to be genuinely held in it.

Eventually, the suffering that had been hidden beneath the surface started to emerge. It guided me, initially cautiously and then with growing urgency, towards psychotherapy, meditation, and the slow, patient process of disentangling the internalised narratives I had been fed…

Humiliation is seldom welcomed. It strikes like a sting, a collapse, a wound to the identity we spend our lives shaping. Yet, suppose we are willing to face it with courage and curiosity. In that case, humiliation can become an unexpected gateway to humility, not the false humility of performance or religious virtue, but the humility that emerges when the self-protective shell cracks, letting something more honest shine through.

In the Acrobat Sutta, the Buddha presents a simple yet striking image: two acrobats performing a balancing act, one standing on the shoulders of the other. The teacher says to the student, “You look after me, and I’ll look after you. If we protect one another, we’ll perform our tricks, earn a reward, and come down safely.”

The Buddha gently reimagines the scene. “It is not in watching after the other that one protects the other,” he says. “By watching after oneself, one protects the other and by watching after the other, one also protects oneself.”

Decolonising therapy does not mean claiming purity. It involves being more honest about the frameworks we inherit, the harm we may unconsciously continue, and the ways even our most well-meaning practices can bear the mark of dominance. It is about prioritising the voices of those most affected by colonisation, racism, and intergenerational trauma, and following their lead.

The call to decolonise is resonating across disciplines, including education, the arts, and, increasingly, psychotherapy. What does it mean to decolonise therapy, a practice already linked with healing and care? Can something that seems harmless still cause harm?

In therapy, we often encounter a longing for the polished self: the one who is healed, organised, and beyond doubt. More often, healing involves befriending the cracks, not sealing them. It’s about attuning ourselves to the truth that wholeness is not the opposite of brokenness; it includes it. This is not easy. We’ve been conditioned to perfect and present ourselves; to tidy up before facing others. Accepting imperfection means allowing grief and gratitude to share the same breath. It means welcoming the parts of us that never quite got it right and noticing that perhaps they’re the most interesting ones.

There is a certain stillness that grief brings. It is not merely an empty space, but a slowing of the world around us, a quieting of urgency, a halt to the impulse to fix, solve, or explain. In grief, life no longer flows in straight lines. Instead, it folds back on itself, weighed down with memory and absence. We are faced with a truth that cannot be altered: something has ended, or someone we love is no longer with us.

Among the many ways we cause harm to ourselves, to others, and to the world, lying may be the most insidious. Not only because of what it conceals, but because of what it permits. A lie is not simply a false statement. It is a moment of rupture, from reality, from integrity, from relationship. And it is often the seed from which far greater suffering grows.

We imagine that we are listening to each other, to the world, to ourselves. But much of what passes for listening is not listening at all — it’s predicting, interpreting, defending, and preparing to reply. The mind, as Philip Glass so vividly puts it, is full of racket. The composer describes this internal noise as a "crowd of ninety-five lunatics" and a "tyrant-censor" standing guard, filtering and distorting whatever comes in. This is not far from what neuroscientists call the predictive mind.

In today’s climate, the concept of free speech is often used not to facilitate dialogue but to suppress it. Paradoxically, those with the largest platforms now cry censorship to deflect critique, casting themselves as victims when faced with accountability. “Cancel culture” is invoked not to protect discourse but to dismiss challenges, especially when those challenges come from individuals who have historically been denied a voice.

This rhetorical sleight of hand, where the powerful claim to be persecuted, distorts the very principles it purports to defend. Those called out for hate speech or misinformation often reframe that feedback as an attack on their rights and weaponise free expression to avoid reflection. In doing so, they cast a legitimate response as oppression, marginalising once again the voices that dare to speak truth to power.

Anxiety can be a complex and multifaceted emotion that arises when longing and fear collide. It is a robust psychological response to anticipating threats or desiring something out of reach. This collision between longing and fear can create a turbulent inner experience that affects our thoughts, emotions, and behaviours.

Feminism is a broad and evolving social, political, and philosophical movement based on the belief that individuals of all genders should have equal rights, opportunities, and freedom from discrimination. At its core, feminism aims to challenge and dismantle systems of patriarchy, structures that have historically favoured men, particularly white, heterosexual, and cisgender men, while advocating for justice, equity, and autonomy for women and marginalised genders.

The manosphere is a loosely connected yet profoundly influential digital ecosystem that offers men a prescriptive worldview on gender, sex, and social worth. Encompassing dating coaches, fitness influencers, incels, and self-proclaimed alpha males, its core message is unmistakable: modern masculinity is under threat, and salvation lies in dominance, control, and relentless self-optimisation.

We create new worlds through our conversations. For now, the ones that heal still exist between humans.

There is a growing chorus of voices wondering whether artificial intelligence, with its 24/7 availability and increasingly human-like tone, might eventually replace psychotherapy. With apps that respond in soothing tones, track your mood, reframe your thoughts, and even simulate empathy, the question is no longer science fiction; it is here.

In 2018, Donald Trump made international headlines by tweeting that he had asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to investigate land seizures and the “large-scale killing of farmers” in South Africa, a claim rooted not in fact, but in a white nationalist conspiracy theory.

In the West, Gaza is often perceived not as a tragedy but as a threat, a site of moral confusion, political fatigue, and symbolic inversion. Here, victimhood dons the uniform of an army. Occupation articulates the language of self-defence. And an open-air prison is depicted as a battleground between equals.

How did we arrive here?

What if we reimagined confession as an act of immense psychological courage and profound human generosity? What if confession were not about proving our unworthiness, but about uncovering the truth of our humanity?

There is an aesthetic in the world that whispers rather than shouts. It does not gleam with newness or symmetry; it beckons from the worn, the weathered, and the unpolished. This is Wabi Sabi — a Japanese sensibility that honours transience, simplicity, and the imperfect nature of all things.

The human brain is not a passive receiver of information. It doesn’t simply sit back and wait for reality to arrive through the senses like a camera recording what is “out there.” Instead, the brain constantly predicts what will happen and updates those predictions based on what occurs.

From the simplest to the most complex, all creatures seek pleasurable, safe, and nutritious environments and avoid unpleasant, dangerous, and barren environments.

If our predictions are distorted, we may be drawn to situations we perceive as safe, pleasurable, or nourishing but encounter the opposite. Thought, speech and action are driven by habit, with craving at the root.

The convergence of Sigmund Freud's Drive Theory, Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution, and Buddhist philosophy offer a template for understanding human behaviour and consciousness. Each of these frameworks, while arising from different contexts and disciplines, intersects at critical points, providing a perspective on the nature of human existence.