Welcome to this week’s edition of The Health Review — and happy Mental Health Awareness Week.

Here’s what we’re covering:

Health News: 🧬 A baby is thriving after receiving the world’s first personalised gene-editing therapy.

Feature: 🧠 Psychotherapist Toby Ingham shares expert advice on how to build emotional stability — and why it matters more than ever.

Trends: 💼 A new survey reveals Gen Z and millennials are prioritising purpose over pay, as workplace wellbeing takes centre stage.

Thanks for reading — and as always, I’d love to hear what you think.

Emily x

Emotional stability is the bedrock of our psychological health, it means that we have space in our minds to reflect on our experiences and to think about things that happen to us without necessarily reacting to them.

You might think of your mental health as being like a thermostat. At one end of the dial, we have good mental health; at the other, we have poor emotional health. The challenge is how to set our emotional thermostat to the optimum level on an ongoing basis, not too hot and not too cold.

Many of our psychological problems become simplified and easier to live with when we remember to pay attention to our emotional stability. We can’t change the bad experiences we have lived through, but we can become better at looking after ourselves in those moments when our problems raise their heads and we feel distressed again.

It’s not necessarily that we have a problem with being hyper-reactive, with jealousy, with anger, with mood swings, with OCD, with ADHD, and so on, though those things can become part of a problem. Often, a key fact is that we lack sufficient emotional stability to look after ourselves and make healthier choices and decisions in the first place. When it comes to our psychology, emotions and moods, we can become so used to trying to work out what’s wrong with us that we can miss this.

Think of developing emotional stability as an ongoing project, much like maintaining physical health.

It's important to remember that none of us have a fixed position on this thermostat and that throughout life, we are all subject to events that throw our lives into upheaval. This might be following an argument, a bereavement, a deterioration in our physical health, a divorce, a betrayal, a redundancy, and so on. Traumatic life events, because they are a challenge to adapt to, always have the capacity to undermine our emotional stability.

Here are some other steps that can be taken to break up complicated problems with emotional instability.

• Try to slow down, a lot of these problems make us feel we need to rush. When we work at a slower tempo, we give ourselves more time to see what’s going on and to look after ourselves better.

• Remind yourself that this may be more about older issues that may have been out of your control, than it is any indicator of problems in your present.

• Find a confidential and impartial person that you can discuss this with.

• Remember that developing new and better emotional and psychological habits takes time, patience, and practise. Don’t put pressure on yourself to run before you can walk.

• Be careful around alcohol and drugs, these tend to have a destabilising effect.

• Work on creating a positive and alternative routine and mindset.

• Think about looking after your emotional stability in the same way as you think about looking after your physical health.

We might compare trying to come to terms with a problem with our emotional stability to knowing we have a weak ankle. If we remember we have a weak ankle, and are liable to sprain it when not paying attention, then we can go about our daily life, walk, run, dance, etc. The problems tend to occur when we forget that we are vulnerable in this area, that tends to be when we stop looking after our ankle and sprain it again. Remembering to look after our ankle tends to protect it and keeps us stable.

In just the same way, we do better when we keep focussed on maintaining a good level of emotional stability. The more attention we can give to nurturing, supportive and stabilising ideas, the better. These habits and practices can help us to de-stress and that tends to improve our emotional stability. In turn, we give ourselves the chance to metabolise stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline, the kinds of hormones that flood our systems in moments of anxiety, prompting us to action when none is required and triggering emotional instability.

The Health Review Podcast

Have You Checked Out The Podcast This Week?

Struggling with emotional instability, jealousy, or unexplained anxiety? Childhood trauma might be at the root.

In this eye-opening conversation to mark Mental Health Awareness Week, psychotherapist Toby Ingham shares powerful insights from his clinical work of twenty five years and new book A Guilty Victim.

Together we explore how early life experiences — especially those we suppress — can shape our emotions, relationships, and even our adult identity.

What's covered:

How to recognise emotional instability in yourself

The long-term effects of childhood trauma and grooming

Retroactive jealousy and other overlooked psychological patterns

“Boarding School Syndrome” and its emotional legacy

The real power of psychotherapy and creative healing

If you're on a journey to better understand your emotional health, this episode is for you.

Toby's website: www.tobyingham.com

A Guilty Victim book: www.amazon.co.uk/Guilty-Victim-Recovering-Creativity-Trauma/dp/1800133065

If you love the episodes, please do subscribe and give the show a rating! 😊 

Thanks for reading!

💌 Loved this issue? Forward it to a friend!
📲 Let’s connect on Instagram: @TheHealthReview