He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Baby
When it comes to parenting the hard way is hard but the easy way is even harder Young women carrying firewood from what was Sackville (Now O’Connell Street) in Dublin, 1916, Press Association Archives. Like most parents I came to experiment with “babywearing” by necessity. An email from my landlord delivered the news that our…
It’s Freaky Friday All Week (Final)
For five days in July 2022 I swapped lives with my children. This is the record of our experience. LIFE SWAP DIARYPart six Last Day: Friday The food has been delicious, but the housekeeping has been somewhere between minimal and non-existent. We are under pressure because we have a friend, Brian, coming over for dinner…
It’s Freaky Friday All Week (5)
For five days in July 2022 I swapped lives with my children. This is the record of our experience. LIFE SWAP DIARYPart Five Day Four: Thursday I am practically begging to leave the house. My usual strategy in summer is to spend as much time as possible outdoors, for several reasons. It’s healthy and wholesome.…
It’s Freaky Friday All Week (4)
For five days in July 2022 I swapped lives with my children. This is the record of our experience. LIFE SWAP DIARYPart Four Day Three: Wednesday Although I only had a few beers last night and got to bed fairly early, I somehow wake up bitterly hungover. There is a patch of sand at the…
It’s Freaky Friday All Week (3)
For five days in July 2022 I swapped lives with my children. This is the record of our experience. LIFE SWAP DIARYPart Three Day Two: Tuesday John is working all day. I’m home alone with three unusually self-sufficient children and no housework to do. I’m pervaded by a subtle but encompassing malaise. A sort of…
It’s Freaky Friday All Week (2)
For five days in July 2022 I swapped lives with my children. This is the record of our experience. LIFE SWAP DIARYPart Two The Challenge Begins Day One: Monday I open my eyes and grope for my phone to check the time- 9AM! I can’t believe how long I’ve slept. My generalised diffuse compulsion to…
It’s Freaky Friday All Week
For five days in July 2022 I swapped lives with my children. This is the record of our experience. LIFE SWAP DIARYPart One April 2022: The Proposal I call the troops (Mary, 12, Michael, 9 and Seamus, 4) around the table for a family conference. I have been banging on relentlessly for years about the…
A Dependable But Fun Wife
I had a bit of a scare last summer. An uncomfortably close call. It started with an occasional pain in my right shoulder when I was running. Soon it was painful every time I ran. And then one morning in the shower I found a lump. I wasn’t too concerned at this point, but since…
Leaving Do
This story is dedicated to the memory of my late mother in law Teresa Frazer. It is a work of fiction, but it is nevertheless still all true. The news was handed down from branch to branch on the family tree from eldest sibling to youngest. We were to come on Friday for a Chinese…
Some Girls Have All the Luck
When I moved from a small, mixed-sex national school in Shannon to a big all-girls school in Belfast for the first time, it marked a seismic shift in my inner world. Aged ten-and-a-bit, introverted, awkward and usually oblivious to social cues, the move to a new city and school had brought some previously uninteresting things…
Let’s Just Not Know
My long-suffering husband Mr Frazer has been listening non-stop to a Van Morrison song called TB Sheets. It is a fantastic bluesy number from 1967. It recounts the experience of a man longing to escape from the room of his dying lover as she begs him to stay. The lyrics are simple and sparse. It…
Find a Feeling, Pass it on
I don’t think there is ever really just one moment when you decide to marry the person you are with, but some moments are such obvious forks in the road that we look back on them as decisive. I was in the living room at my parents house in Dundrum, Co Down when my brother…
On the Level: Bill’s Story
The following is the first chapter of a book I’m working on with Bill Fitzgerald. This book is Bill’s account of the experience of being diagnosed with Bipolar I Disorder, hosptialised involuntarily and the many years of work and dedication to recovery that have led him to a level of successful life and work that…
Don’t Forget You are a Giant Dirt-Bat
A few years ago, when my son was about five years old, we were late to drop his older sister off at a birthday party. The party was in the beautiful Edwardian Herbert Park in Dublin. It was warm, and I was sweaty…and stressed. I was pushing an empty buggy with as much speed as…
Patsy’s fax machine… new ways to appreciate the old
I’ve always been annoyingly intrigued by the past, from my 1990s teenage obsession with 1970s flares, to my 2000s throwback to vinyl, and my very misguided and short-lived 2010s fling with a real typewriter. I know, I know, it is very easy to romanticise the past and assume it was all so much better and…
Domo Arigato, Mr Human
In November 2020 the Financial Times published a story titled “Thanks for polluting the planet” in which they reported on British research claiming that the 64 million ‘unnecessary’ emails sent by Britons each day contribute significantly to climate change. A BBC article also reporting on the issue (Climate change: Can sending fewer emails really save…
Was that last contraction 6 or more like 7 units of pain Mrs Frazer?
I’m Trish, and I’m a quantophile. The potential of quantitative research to answer seemingly unanswerable questions about our innermost experiences is what first attracted me to psychology. And over a decade later, I’m still in love. But the rose tint is definitely starting to wear off as I see more and more examples of balanced…
Will the real Rosenhan pseudopatients please stand up?
If you have taken more than a passing interest in psychology, at any level, you have almost certainly come across the Rosenhan Experiment in which 8 pseudopatients claiming to hear a voice were admitted to psychiatric hospitals and diagnosed rapidly and fixedly with various psychotic conditions. Even if some other aspects of your course (like…
Can I use a ‘parental block’ to filter out parenting websites?
In the early weeks and months after my first child was born, sleep deprived though I was, I felt a lot of certainty in the parenting theories and strategies I would use. Sure, the job was difficult, but I knew how to do it. Sleep, routines, attachment, feeding, child care, I knew where I stood…
Regrets for my old Nokia 3310: work-life balance in the era of smartphones
What led Denis Diderot, 18th century philosopher, critic of the arts and defender of the enlightenment to become a “slave” to his dressing gown? Diderot edited the influential Encyclopédie as well as many controversial philosophical works challenging religious orthodoxy and championing rationalism. He also left his stamp on the field of marketing with a charming…
How can we address mental health stigma at work?
Interest in the stigma surrounding mental health difficulties has been increasing amongst researchers and health practitioners, and with good reason. Experiencing discrimination and negative attitudes as a result of mental health difficulties can lead to social isolation and reduce the chance of recovery. Those who have experienced psychosis have even been presented by the media…
Trish Thinks... 