Tag: reflection

mental wellbeing, mental-health, self-reflection

How to build a better relationship with social media

As featured in Woman and Home, 19.08.2025

If you’ve ever promised yourself you’d “just have a quick scroll” and found yourself still glued to your phone an hour later, you’re not alone. Social media is designed to keep us engaged,but with some thoughtful steps, you can create a healthier, more intentional relationship with it. Change isn’t about willpower alone; it’s about knowing why you want to change, using your strengths, and aligning new habits with your values.

1. Know Your Why
Before making changes, pause and ask yourself: Why do I want a different relationship with social media? Is it because it’s eating into time with loved ones, affecting my mood, or replacing activities I value? The clearer you are, the easier it will be to build meaningful habits you can maintain.

Try pairing a long-term aim, such as “I want to spend less time scrolling”, with a practical short-term step, like limiting social media use to a 10-minute window in the morning and evening. Tools like app timers can help you stick to these boundaries and remind you when it’s time to move on to something more fulfilling.

2. Chase the Joy of Missing Out
Goals are easier to stick to when they’re framed around what you’re moving towards rather than what you’re avoiding. If you’re cutting down on social media, think about what you’re gaining, like peace of mind, more time for hobbies, deeper face-to-face conversations. This is sometimes called the “Joy of Missing Out” (JOMO): the satisfaction of saying “no” to the scroll and “yes” to something more rewarding.

If that feels unfamiliar, think back to a time you put your phone aside. What did you do instead? How did you feel afterwards? Remembering those wins can reinforce your motivation when temptation strikes.

3. Make Your Goals Crystal Clear
Vague intentions like “spend less time on Instagram” are harder to follow than concrete ones. Instead, try: “Check notifications once in the afternoon, then log off.” This way, you can track your progress and feel a genuine sense of achievement. Over time, you can extend your phone-free periods or reduce the number of apps you check.

4. Celebrate Your Success
When you stick to your new habit, reward yourself. This doesn’t have to mean spending money,it could be making a favourite cup of tea, enjoying a walk, or spending time on a creative project you love. The key is to pause and notice the satisfaction that comes from following through. That positive reinforcement strengthens the habit and makes it more likely to last.

Remember: Forming a new habit takes patience and self-compassion. If you slip up, treat it as an opportunity to learn rather than a failure. With a clear purpose, realistic steps, and a focus on what you gain, social media can shift from a drain on your attention to a tool you use on your own terms.

British Psychological Society, Psychology students, science communication

What does creativity mean to me

The 2025 Voices in Psychology prompt for The Psychologist was ‘what does creativity mean to me?’Here are my thoughts:

Creativity is most traditionally associated with artistic expression, especially when it results in something that is striking in a tangible or obvious way. But from a scientific perspective, creativity is this and more, and it is this broader understanding that I find truly exciting.

To me, creativity represents a mental and emotional space where we are free to explore, to experiment, to fail, and to grow. Creativity is strongly linked to wellbeing, but this is not because artistic individuals are inherently happier. An ability to think creatively helps us to navigate difficult situations more adaptively. It supports emotional regulation, tolerance of ambiguity, and intrinsic motivation. It helps us remain open and flexible when facing uncertainty, and offers outlets for processing negative emotions, which in itself is a form of problem-solving. It reflects resilience, our capacity to try, to persevere, and to approach challenges in novel ways. While outwardly creativity may appear as a perceptible output or innovation, inwardly, it is more about how we think, how we process complexity, and how we respond to uncertainty.

Copyright Emma Palmer-Cooper

In our own research on creativity, we used questionnaires asking participants to rate themselves on traditional forms such as painting, music, and the culinary arts. However, what proved most interesting to me was a final open-ended question that invited people to describe any other ways in which they saw themselves as creative. Every response was different. Participants shared examples from fields as varied as carpentry, sports, farming, accountancy, and broadcasting. In other studies, asking students to engage with simple creative activities led to significant reductions in stress and how they perceived stressful situations. What has emerged is a strong sense that creativity is, at its core, our unique ability to approach and solve problems in a positive way. 

This is why I encourage students to reflect on their own personal expressions of creativity. Recognising and engaging with it can reveal a lot more about your strengths and abilities than you may see on the surface. 

In my own work, writing and creating content about my teaching and research has helped me think about what I do in different ways. I’ve since found that it’s become a very useful tool, finding new angles for my teaching, new research ideas, and new ways of doing work. This freedom to engage with my work in different and creative ways helps me overcome problems and enjoy the process.

Copyright Emma Palmer-Cooper

My personal creative practice of yarn craft has also led to new and exciting opportunities. From developing research ideas, innovating my teaching methods, and delivering science communication events, creativity in one area of my life has influenced my ability to deliver ideas in the other.

As Psychologists, creativity is not limited to what we produce in research, education or practice. Creativity is a dynamic, internal process that shapes how we experience and respond to the world, and how we approach our diverse and vibrant field.

Psychology students, self-reflection

Reflective Practice: A Vital Skill for Every Aspiring Psychologist

Reflective practice is a core skill for any psychologist. Whether you’re aiming to become a therapist, clinical psychologist, or working in research, educational, occupational or forensic settings, it’s a good skill to learn. At its heart, reflective practice involves actively thinking about an experience, particularly one you want to learn from, in order to improve your professional approach.

This means taking the time to pause and examine what happened, your role in it, and how you felt and thought during the experience. It includes evaluating your behaviour, noticing your emotional responses, and analysing your decisions. Through this process, you can identify what went well, what could have been different, and, importantly, what you might change in future similar situations.

Reflection is a structured process of analysing, questioning, and reframing. It enables you to grow not only in self-awareness but also in skill, confidence, and effectiveness. This is known as reflective learning, and it supports continual development across all areas of psychological practice.

Why Reflective Practice Matters in Psychology

While reflective practice is often associated with therapeutic training, it is used across all branches of psychology. Whether you’re working with clients, managing a research team, designing behaviour change interventions, or consulting in organisations, being reflective supports:

  • Improved decision-making
  • Greater empathy and self-awareness
  • Ethical sensitivity and professionalism
  • Ongoing learning and adaptability

Learning to be a reflective practitioner is, therefore, not just a course requirement, it’s a core skill for growth throughout your career as a psychologist.

How Students Can Practise Reflective Thinking

Psychology students are already developing the habits of critical thinking and evidence-based analysis. Reflective practice builds on this by encouraging you to apply that critical lens to your own experiences, whether in academic work, placements, personal interactions, or your own emotional responses to what you’re studying.

Here are some practical ways to start:

Keep a Reflective Journal

Journaling helps you ‘get your thoughts out of your head’ and onto the page. This can reduce cognitive and emotional overload and often leads to greater clarity. Whether you use a traditional notebook, a digital diary, or record voice notes, the format doesn’t matter, what’s important is that you create a space for reflection.

Create a Reflective Portfolio

Over time, build a portfolio that documents your reflections, learning, and professional growth. This might include reflections on lectures, placement experiences, feedback from tutors, or challenges you’ve overcome. It becomes a tangible record of your development, useful for job applications, supervision, or future training.

I made a downloadable PDF Reflection guides for clinical placements and study skills to get you started.

Ask Reflective Questions

Try using prompts such as (adapted from Bennett-Levy et al., 2009):

  • What happened? How did I feel? What did I notice?
  • What did I learn from this? Was it helpful or unhelpful?
  • What would I do differently next time?
  • How did this affect my understanding of myself, others, or psychology more broadly?

These kinds of questions can be used in written reflections, discussions with peers, or in supervision. They are also useful in therapeutic work for practitioners and clients to enhance insight and effectiveness.

Looking Ahead: Applying Reflective Practice to Your Career

In later stages of your training, you’ll begin applying these reflective skills more formally, whether through writing about your research, presenting casework, or preparing for publication. Regardless of your specific career path, the ability to reflect critically and compassionately on your work is what will set you apart as an ethical and thoughtful practitioner.

Being reflective isn’t about being overly self-critical or dwelling on mistakes. It’s about staying open, learning continuously, and improving your practice, not just for your benefit, but for the people and communities you aim to support.

Whether you’re heading into clinical training, research, or any other psychological field, reflective practice is a key skill for professional development. Start now, and let it grow with you throughout your career.

Reflective practice starter pack:

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Reflecting on my research goals
emotional-wellbeing, mental wellbeing, self-reflection

Ways to embrace and accept sadness in a healthy way

As featured in Stylist March 2025

Sadness is a natural, important emotion that helps us process life’s experiences, learn about ourselves, and grow. 

First, we need to understand why we experience sadness. Sadness typically arises when we experience a type of loss, either something tangible like a possession, or experiences like connection with others.

Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

Whilst sadness is unpleasant, this negative experience lets us know that something was important to us, and so we learn about our needs, values and goals in the same way we do with positive experiences. Together, positive and negative experiences allow us to feel fulfilled in live, as we have things and experiences that we do not want to lose. 

When addressing sadness, getting a balance is key; dwelling on sadness can lead to a negative outlook on life, and supressing negative emotions altogether can negatively impact mood. But the concept of ‘embracing sadness’ can feel quite strange; no one truly relishes a negative experience but remembering that emotions are not permanent can support ‘feeling our feelings’ in the moment, and acknowledging that they will pass.

There are a number of exercises you can try out to help with this process.

Start with acceptance – A gentle way to accepting sadness is by first observing emotions in everyday life, at times when you are not feeling sad. Keeping a diary or journal can help with this. Try noting your emotions at different times of day, how long they last, thoughts that accompany them, and physical sensations. With practice this type of self-reflection becomes easier. As you gain confidence, you can start applying this to moments of sadness.

Observe your sadness– By taking an observer’s perspective you can notice emotions without judgement. Ask yourself ‘How does this sadness feel in the moment?’ ‘What physical sensations am I experiencing, and where is this in my body?’ You can also notice as you go through these questions how sadness changes, and what the impact of this change is. Bringing more objective awareness to your sadness can highlight that emotions are not permanent, and that you are not your emotions.

Describe your sadness – Going beyond a label of ‘sadness’ can help reduce the intensity of emotions. Describing can also help you reflect on the meaning behind this experience. You could take a commentator stance, explaining what the feeling is, as if to another person. Describing sadness can provide insight into what’s really going on, and reduce any related overwhelm. For example, if you have broken a treasured item possession, you might say:

  • I feel sadness in my shoulders
  • I feel disappointment in my stomach
  • The possession reminds me of a person I miss
  • Without this physical reminder I feel this loss more

Learn from your sadness – Reframing sadness as a learning experience can help shift perspective from the immediate emotion, without supressing or ignoring it. The ‘What, So What, Now What?’ method can be used to reflect on your emotional experience. 

  • What? – What did I experience? 
  • So What? – What does this sadness tell me about my strengths, values, and goals.
  • Now What? – How can I respond to similar experiences in the future?

By embracing, reflecting, and learning from sadness rather than avoiding it, we allow ourselves to heal and move forward with greater emotional strength.