What the diagnosis gave me was a calm, logical explanation for some of my behaviour over the years.

Those of us who’ve had ADHD since childhood tend to self-teach ourselves coping strategies without even realising it: keys and handbags always in the same spot, checking the car or train seat before leaving, setting an alarm on the phone for just about everything. We get good at building workarounds for our day-to-day symptoms.

What’s harder to recognise, and near impossible to hack, are the bigger picture patterns ADHD shapes over a lifetime. It wasn’t until after my diagnosis, once I’d read more about it, that I started zooming out on my own life. Was ADHD related to the four different careers I’d had? Were the steady stream of driving and parking offences part of it too? (My brother emailed me a month ago to say I’d received “another love letter” from the NSW government, while driving Dad’s car around Sydney.) Had ADHD played a role in my numerous boyfriends through my twenties? (My dad once affectionately called me “swivel-head”.)

I’d never once reflected on it, let alone try to hack it.

Another pattern I’d developed without realising it was definitely linked to my ADHD: negative self-talk. Somewhere along the way I’d built an unhealthy belief that I wasn’t as capable or intelligent as I presented myself to be. Despite my academic results including a summa cum laude Master’s from the University of Pennsylvania, and building a software company in Italy, I carried an underlying fear that people would eventually work out I wasn’t as sharp as my CV suggested. I was almost surprised when my achievements were mentioned. Had I actually done those things?

In my own mind, I had plenty of evidence to judge myself harshly. Years of mindless mishaps: hunting for my sunglasses while they sat on my head, asking someone I’d just met which city they were from twice, constantly losing my phone.

It wasn’t until my late forties, after having two children while running the software company I’d founded, that my anxiety doctor pointed out the gap between my self-image and my actual capability. She recommended talking therapy and gave me the number of a psychologist she highly recommended. I’d done CBT for anxiety in my late twenties, but I’d never really talked through my life and the beliefs beneath it. The therapist was excellent, sharp at getting straight to the root of things. I went weekly for six months and it was enormously effective.

The ADHD research that made me think about my behaviour

I recently read Understanding ADHD in Girls & Women, edited by Joanne Steer. At one point it felt like I was reading my own case study.

Career changes

Chapters seven and eight look at what happens when executive dysfunction and impulsivity go unaddressed for years, and career upheaval is there. Adult women with ADHD tend to change jobs more than their peers, often out of necessity. Novelty keeps an ADHD brain engaged, and once the challenge of a role wears off, boredom sets in. The job changes are often about a search for a workplace and role that can accommodate the way an ADHD brain is wired. It’s exhausting for an ADHDer to fight boredom every day.

Driving

I discovered the speeding and parking fines aren’t just me being careless. There’s actual science behind it. A review of the research on ADHD and driving found that adults with ADHD consistently show worse driving outcomes than adults without it: more accidents, more unsafe driving, more near-misses. The typical ADHD traits inattention and impulsivity, are just as disruptive behind the wheel. One encouraging finding was that diagnosis and therapy for ADHD meaningfully improves driving performance. Worth knowing if you’re wondering whether a diagnosis is worth it.

(Note: this study looked at adults with ADHD, not women specifically.)

Relationships

A study comparing marriages where one partner has ADHD to marriages where neither does found that the ADHD couples reported more conflict, worse marital adjustment and rockier conflict resolution than the non ADHD couples. The researchers’ concluded that if ADHD is unrecognised and untreated it can be a factor in marriages ending. Executive dysfunction, forgetting things, losing the thread of a plan, struggling to follow through, paired with emotional intensity that often comes with ADHD, can wear a relationship down over time.

What my diagnosis changed, and what it didn’t

I’m still collecting speeding fines and parking infringements, years after diagnosis. I still need to start from scratch in my career every decade or so. Diagnosis wasn’t a cure. My behaviour since being diagnosed is fairly similar to my behaviour beforehand. I tried taking medication but it wasn’t for me (see my article My ADHD Medication Experiment).

What did change is the story I tell myself about it. Before, a speeding fine made me angry with myself for being careless. And even though I laughed along with my girlfriends about the number of former boyfriends of mine at a dinner we once went to, I wasn’t proud of it. Now, I’ve got compassion instead of judgement. I understand the career pivots too. All this behaviour now comes with a gentle explanation. It doesn’t fix the underlying behaviour, but it changes how I read it. Self-judgement is exhausting. Self-understanding isn’t. And for what it’s worth (particularly for my girlfriends who laughed… hah!), twenty-plus happy years into my marriage, I seem to be something of an anomaly.

I don’t think an earlier diagnosis would have handed me a different life. I think it would have handed me a kinder inner voice a lot sooner, and that alone would have been worth it.

If any of this sounds familiar, the career changes, the relationship patterns, the speeding and parking fines, it might be worth asking your own questions about it. Not to self-diagnose, obviously, but because a diagnosis can help you and the people who care about you, understand it. It didn’t fix anything for me. But it turned two decades of self-judgement into forgiveness.

I apologise for not posting an article for several weeks. There’s been a lot going on.

Have a lovely weekend,

- Trina xx

In the past couple of years since stepping back from full time work, I’ve had time for hobbies again. I’ve fallen in love with scuba diving, free diving… and beekeeping.

I do these things because I love them. And I know I love them because I get a feeling from within my gut when I do them that this is who I am. Learning how to do these things and getting good at them gives me a sense of satisfaction that adds meaning to my life. And I’m endlessly curious to learn more about them and improve my skills.

Doing things we love matters more than we realise. Because when we’re absorbed in something we’re passionate about, our brain produces dopamine, the chemical involved in motivation and reward. It gives us a sense of mastery and progress, which builds a confidence that flows over into the rest of our lives.

The Bees

My most recent passion is beekeeping. It started about a year ago when I finally took action on something I’d been thinking about for years. I called Andrea, a well known beekeeper in our area, to ask if he could show me how to put a couple of beehives at the end of our garden.

“It’s a bit more complicated than just getting beehives. You need to learn to become a beekeeper first” he told me.

“Well how long does it take to learn to be a beekeeper?” I asked.

“You can start with our beginners course,” he responded. “Three Saturday mornings. Starts this weekend.”

So I did what Andrea told me and found myself in the 101 of beekeeping with a group of ten or so other newbies. The problem was that Andrea knows a lot about bees and he spoke quickly in Italian, using new beekeeping words such as melario (honey super) that I’d never even heard of in English. I had to keep interrupting to ask him to repeat what he’d just said more slowly. I felt like the dunce of the class.

At the end of the course I wasn’t sure I knew enough about beekeeping to actually be responsible for bees.

I was right. Because learning about the three types of bees, the different jobs they do, how they behave, mate, make honey and more had not prepared me for actually looking after them. It was way more complicated than I’d expected.

In April earlier this year, I took delivery of my first three hives. I’d joined the local bee association and ordered bees from them. A month or so later they sent me a time and location to pick them up during the night. It had to be dark so as not to confuse the bees’ orientamento (sense of direction). My girlfriend came with me and we navigated our way to the Google location. It led us to a remote area, a barren field which led to a dirt road with muddy ruts. It looked like a perfect setting for a horror film.

Not long after we arrived, a large flatbed truck rolled in laden with polystyrene boxes and we joined the back of the line of new beekeepers. Andrea (not only was he the teacher, but also the bee supplier) handed me three dirty polystyrene boxes covered in plastic mesh and told me to gently place them in the back of our car. I felt like I did when I was first allowed to take my newborn baby home from the hospital. Totally unprepared. No idea what I was doing.

Andrea told me that when I got home I had to put the boxes at the end of the garden in the exact place where they would live, facing the direction he’d showed me. And it had to be done that night before it got light. He told me to cut and pull back the plastic mesh covering the hole in the box so the bees could breathe.

So back at the bee meet, my friend and I carried my boxes tentatively and placed them in the back of my car. As we were closing the boot, one of the other beekeepers drove out in front of us, wearing his brand new beekeeping hat inside his car. My girlfriend broke out in laughter and I followed. This would be the last time I ever laughed at the sight of someone in a beekeepers suit.

The previous week, I had picked up my starter kit from the bee association and the two men handing out the equipment laughed at me when I asked naive questions about what each item was called and what it was used for. “You’re going to get stung!” they quipped.

And get stung, I did!

That first morning, Andrea (who was also the consultant for the association) helped me transfer the hives from the polystyrene boxes into their permanent homes, the coloured wooden Langstroth bee hives. I had been surprised earlier that morning when I pulled out the bee suit, that it only covered my top half. I was expecting an all-in-one. But I didn’t get stung that first day. So I thought maybe those men at the association had underestimated me and my bees.

In the following weeks, I had to gradually grow the bee population in the hives, adding a new frame weekly for the bees to expand their home. We’d been taught how to increase the population in time for the first blossoming of the season, the acacia flowers.

What no one told me was that as the bee population got stronger and the weather got hotter, the bees got angrier. A month after I became a beekeeper I got stung for the first time on my leg. It hurt like a b***h and my leg swelled and became red and itchy for a few days. So I bought some yellow beekeeping pants to match my top.

A week later when I was working with the bees, bent over the hive, a couple of them must have flown in through the gap between my pants and top. When I realised there were two bees buzzing around my head, inside my suit, I panicked. Ignoring all those videos I’d watched online of beekeepers remaining calm while a whole swarm sat on their arm, I screamed and took off across the garden, ripping off my bee suit. They stung me on my head, in my hair and on my neck. Then on my wrist as I tugged off the suit. This time the stings throbbed for days.

It was time to get a serious bee suit. I went to the best shop in the area and asked for the heaviest duty, bullet proof all-in-one bee suit available. I didn’t care that there was a heatwave and this was a suit for the winter.

The next day, in my new suit, sweltering under the hot sun, I harvested, for the first time, more than 30kg of honey.

Why Learning Something New Is Good for Mental Health

This year has been a tough one. A number of bad things have happened. And in the middle of a flat emotional stretch, working with the bees, despite the stings, has made me happy. And a big part of the happiness has come from learning something new.

I have learned, among other things, that the female worker bee’s life is about six weeks long, and in that time she moves through a career path that is like an internship in a company that trains people in different departments. She starts as a nurse, caring for the young in the hive. Then she moves into housekeeping, cleaning and maintaining the colony. Once her wings have properly developed, she graduates to forager, flying out to find nectar and pollen for the hive. Six weeks, three completely different jobs. Each one essential to keeping the hive running smoothly.

I have also learned that hives are painted in different colours so the bees can find their way home then recognise which hive is theirs. Such a simple, practical feature of the Langstroth beehive design.

What the Research Says

A 2025 review in the UK published in the Journal of Mental Health looked across existing research on hobbies and wellbeing and found a consistent pattern. Hobbies give people a sense of mastery and personal growth, and this feeling of reward and satisfaction plays an active role in easing stress, anxiety and depression while improving our satisfaction in life.

The NHS’s guidance on protecting mental wellbeing lists learning new things as one of the core, evidence-backed ways to support your mental health. Alongside staying physically active and having meaningful connections with people. Setting a goal to learn or try something new gives you a sense of purpose and working towards it or meeting it, makes you feel more optimistic and satisfied with your life.

There is also a concept called flow, first described by the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and still referenced regularly in happiness research from institutes like Johns Hopkins. Flow is what happens when you are so absorbed in an activity that time disappears and your mind shuts up for a while. Freediving does this to me. Beekeeping too.

How Do You Actually Find the Thing?

The only way to find out what you love doing is to take the plunge and try something for the first time. That’s it. You just have to show up to something you have never done before, think you might like and see what happens.

For me, sometimes I know within the first go whether i like something. I have a gut instinct that tells me. It happened the first time I ever tried freediving. With beekeeping it was more of a gradually growing feeling. Sometimes you need a few tries before you know.

The Point of All This

If you are in a flat, grey, everything-is-a-bit-boring stretch right now, the thing that will make you feel better is not always something big and life changing. Sometimes it’s something smaller and simpler.

Go look for your thing. Try the thing you have been putting off. See what your gut says.

If you’re navigating a flat or difficult stretch yourself, you’re not alone. And it’s worth talking to someone you trust or a professional about how you’re feeling.

Thanks for reading,

- Trina xx

Recently I was walking with a close girlfriend on one of my favourite tracks near home, a dirt road lined with magnificent lime (linden) trees, when she told me her daughter wants to come off the antidepressants she was prescribed for her depression a few years ago.

My girlfriend said “So I asked her what she’s going to do to manage her mental health when she stops the medication.”

“That,” I told her, “is one of the most important things anyone who’s ever been prescribed antidepressants needs to be told before stopping them.” Because mental health requires managing even after you’re well enough to go off medication. You need a plan for how you’re going to reduce your anxiety and depression on a daily basis, long term, to prevent getting sick again.

That simple but extremely important question is perhaps the most valuable advice anyone considering stopping this type of medication can be given.

When I was diagnosed with a chronic anxiety disorder at 29, nobody told me this.

My doctor handed me a prescription for an antidepressant in the SSRI family called Aropax and said I needed weekly talking therapy for three months to learn CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy). CBT is a technique that helps you recognise unhelpful thought patterns that can lead to anxiety and depression, then teaches you how to challenge and change them. It’s a powerful technique, but in my case it wasn’t enough alone to manage my anxiety. Today it’s just one of the tools I use.

What my doctor didn’t recognise was that my condition was severe and needed a whole series of lifestyle changes alongside medication to keep me well long term. My anxiety has a powerful chemical component that sweeps violently through my body when anxious thoughts start looping in my mind.

So for almost two years I rode the rollercoaster. Medication would help me surface from the depths of anxiety and depression, I’d start feeling like myself again, decide I was “fixed,” and come off it. Then the next stressful thing would happen, the anxious thoughts would start and snowball, my anxiety would spiral and quickly become debilitating again. I’d be back on medication for another three to six months before the whole ride started again.

The third time I went back on antidepressants, I wasn’t just anxious. I felt defeated. Like I would never be capable of living a normal, balanced life. Like I’d failed, again, and was a burden on the people I kept leaning on each time I got sick. When I asked my doctor if I could get pregnant and have children while taking this medication, she told me I’d likely have to stop in the first trimester of pregnancy, which turned out to be incorrect advice. I lost hope completely. Losing hope had serious consequences for me that I’m not going to get into here, but I’ll say this much. It was a dark period, and it didn’t have to be.

What nobody told me, until it was almost too late, was that I needed to think about taking medication long term, and make lifestyle changes such as reducing alcohol, getting proper sleep and doing regular consistent cardio exercise to keep my anxiety at bay. Looking back, I don’t think my doctor, who was touted at the time as a leading anxiety expert, knew what she was doing. If she did, she would never have let me go off antidepressants without a comprehensive plan in place.

So if there’s one piece of advice I’d give anyone who’s been on medication for anxiety or depression and is thinking about coming off it, it’s this. Talk to your doctor or psychiatrist first, always, before you change or stop anything. That part is non-negotiable. But alongside that, I say to you gently: please accept that you will always be vulnerable to anxiety and depression during stressful periods of your life. Plan how you’re going to manage your mental health long term.

I understand that when you’re young, it’s a lot to swallow the idea that you have a condition that needs managing for the rest of your life. I wasn’t able to get my head around it, even in my early 30s. But believe me, it’s important to start thinking this way if you’ve ever been prescribed antidepressants for anxiety or depression.

In my case, the most powerful natural therapies I’ve learnt through trial and error are 30 to 60 minutes of cardio exercise daily. I run in nature with my dog Milo every second day and swim with a squad on the days I don’t run. I’ve also more or less given up alcohol completely. I’m strict about prioritising sleep, even when I’m busy, and I follow an anti-inflammatory diet to keep my gut calm, due to the strong link between gut health and anxiety. I take cold baths regularly and try to spend as much time as I can outdoors, in the sun, in nature.

There are also other things that are powerful therapy for anxiety and depression: a regular meditation or mindfulness practice, cutting out smoking, spending more time with animals, joining a community of people who share the same passions. A book club, a running group. Or volunteer work for an organisation you love.

My daily routine is on the extreme end because I’ve suffered chronically from anxiety and depression. But if you’re thinking about coming off medication, please think carefully about what your plan is, and talk to someone you trust about it. It has been proven that telling someone you respect about a plan makes you more likely to follow through.

And if you’re wondering whether lifestyle changes are strong enough to stave off anxiety and depression, here’s some research. A major 2023 review published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, the most comprehensive of its kind to date, pulled together data from close to a hundred reviews and over a thousand trials, covering more than 128,000 people. It found that regular exercise was around one and a half times more effective than medication or talking therapy at easing symptoms of depression, anxiety and psychological distress. One and a half times.

This is not a reason to throw your medication away. Again, please talk to your doctor before making any changes. But it is a reason to start taking regular movement and exercise seriously. It’s a powerful part of your treatment.

Good mental health isn’t a finish line you cross. It’s something you tend to, day by day, for the long haul. Once you make peace with that and build a positive routine into your daily life, it becomes automatic, a natural part of who you are. And that’s when you start to change your life for the better. As your routine becomes habitual, it creates a ripple effect and other good habits follow naturally. That positive momentum carries into every part of your life.

If you found this article useful, please share it with someone you know who’s on antidepressants. This is the advice most people never get.

Thanks for reading,

- Trina xx

In the last few weeks I have experienced grief on a level I’ve never felt before. Grief for the loss of a young person I cared about deeply. And I’m struggling with it. His family’s loss, my loss, the senselessness of it, this constant sick feeling.

Lately, life has made it clear. It’s fragile.

Deep grief makes the things we normally do and think about in our daily life seem trivial. The work we do, the plans we’re making for Christmas, the things we’ve been meaning to repair at home. They all seem unimportant. Real loss strips away everything until we’re left only with what actually matters: birth, the inexorability of death and love.

In this period, I have found myself wishing, not for the first time in my life, that I had been brought up in a family with a religion. A set of beliefs about life and afterlife that help people process and cope with losing someone they love.

So I’ve been reading about how Buddhism thinks about death. I find it comforting. Buddhism teaches that death is not an ending but a transition, part of an ongoing cycle. Tragedies such as the loss of a young person are seen as part of impermanence, accepted as a fundamental truth of the world. The Buddhist concept of anicca, impermanence, is one of the three principles of existence: everything changes, everything passes, everything is temporary. Buddhists believe that resisting these truths is what leads us to suffering. The Tibetan Buddhist tradition also has the concept of the bardo, the state of consciousness between death and rebirth which presents death as a doorway rather than a wall. I find a bit of relief in a worldview that looks death in the face and says with gentleness “accept it.”

This is not so far from Stoicism, which I wrote about recently in my article Why Your Brain Goes Straight to the Worst Case Scenario and What Stoicism Says About It. The Stoics had a practice called memento mori, which means “remember that you will die,” practised as a deliberate mental exercise. By meditating on and confronting the worst thing, by looking it straight in the eye, you strip away some of its power over you. And you become clearer about what actually matters.

Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic philosopher and Roman Emperor, wrote: “You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.” He wrote this almost two thousand years ago.

Both Buddhism and Stoicism arrive at the same place from very different directions. Life is fragile. And looking at that fragility directly, allowing yourself to contemplate it, is where something meaningful begins to happen.

What has started to happen to me is gratitude.

Moments of gratitude that come from deep in my gut. Gratitude for love, for the people I love and the things I love doing.

Grief is starting to make me more present. The ordinary things I usually rush through in my daily life suddenly look different when I remember that none of them are permanent.

I still believe the loss of a young person is wrong. It’s brutal and unfair and the world is diminished by it. But I do think there is something meaningful in what grief forces us to see. It burns away everything that was never real or important to begin with and leaves us only with what is.

The Buddhists would probably say this is the lesson.

The Stoics would agree, and then tell you to get on with it.

I’m trying to do both.

Sorry for not publishing an article for the past month.

- Trina xx

Sleeping amongst massive alpine conifers and pines in a mountain forest, even if for a few days, is a luxury we all deserve. Getting in sync with the rhythm of a forest and breathing the fresh mountain air with trees that cure, slows the pace and affords us a peace that we lose in our urban lives. No wonder most people who live in nature are kind spirited folk.

I am staying with my husband in a treehouse made of wood, glass and stone for three nights set high in Italian mountain pines in a forest in the Dolomites. My only expectation about where we chose to go for this long weekend was that I wanted to get closer to nature.

Sitting here in our treehouse writing in my journal and now writing this is lulling me to sleep. The way you feel when your eyes close and you have no choice but sleep. All I can hear is silence. The trees are alive but not moving. They’re powerful and command your attention but at the same time they don’t need your attention. They’re immense and magnificent, content to just be. There are so many different shades of green in our forest, I can’t count them.

Our hike today from the treehouse, up the mountain to a local malga (alpine pasture) had us on dirt tracks winding up through yellow pastures hosted by dandelions, miniature lakes with bright orange and white mottled carp. And conifers with needles and cones that smelled so real, they could never be bottled into a home scent. Or melted into a candle that smells like Gwenyth Paltrow’s flower between her legs!

No, this country air and hike in the mountain forest is the real thing. And there’s a real reason why we already feel at peace after being here just 24 hours. Because spending time close to nature, staying in a treehouse or whatever place you can find where there are plants, flowers, trees, animals, water, soil, anything without human intervention, cures us. It’s like medicine we didn’t even know we needed. My husband and I only realised how tired we were when we came here. The forest slowed us down to its own pace after we arrived last night. And did we ever sleep!

And the thing I wanted to say is it’s not just me romanticising the first weekend away alone with my husband in, I can’t remember how many years. There is real, proven science behind why our first day in the Dolomite forest has made us feel so good.

First, it’s what we’re breathing. These towering conifers, mostly ancient larches, surrounding our treehouse, protect us. Trees, particularly pines, conifers and spruces, continuously release compounds called phytoncides into the air. These are natural chemicals known as “essential oils of the forest” that trees produce to protect themselves from insects and bacteria. When we inhale them, our body reacts. Research shows that phytoncides boost the activity of our body’s natural killer cells, our immune system’s first line of defenders against viruses and pathogens, while also lowering blood pressure and reducing cortisol, the stress hormone. And the part that’s got me really excited: the immune-boosting effects of just one forest walk have been shown to last for weeks. Today we hiked through a free, open-air healing centre. Every breath a dose of mother nature’s medicine.

Then there was the air itself. Mountain air at altitude, far from traffic and industry, contains none of the pollutants that most of us inhale every single day. The air we breathed in on that mountain trail was cleaner, richer in oxygen and free of the invisible chemicals most lungs normally have to process.

And next the hiking. Walking uphill on uneven terrain is one of the most natural forms of cardio exercise there is. It gets your heart pumping, improves circulation and fills the brain with endorphins. And it builds up a kind of physical tiredness that gives you that sense of well earned achievement. It’s an honest tiredness that leads you into deep sleep and you wake up the next day with energy.

I’ve been reading Neuroscientist TJ Power’s Sunday Times bestseller The Dose Effect. It’s about the small, practical things you can do to optimise your brain chemistry through the four key hormones: Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin and Endorphins. Power presents evidence that physical exertion triggers the release of endorphins, the brain’s natural feel-good chemicals that reduce stress and lift mood. Effortful physical activity also drives dopamine production, the chemical that makes us feel motivated and then rewarded at the end.

And the silence. Us urban people have become so used to a constant background hum, notifications, household appliances, the noise in our heads, that we lose contact with what quiet feels like.

Research on spending time in forests has been shown to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which slows everything down and makes you feel calm. This happens when your brain stops perceiving threat. Nature’s pace is slow. It doesn’t demand anything of you. When you spend time close to nature, your nervous system relaxes without asking permission.

When you next have the chance to spend time closer to nature, take it.

In my last article I wrote about how to rewire your brain and change negative thought patterns. I’ve been practising the techniques daily: identifying negative thoughts, naming them, distancing them, replacing them. I promise you it works.

But then something happened to me after my last article that made me reflect more deeply on the negativity bias, and what it actually means when we’re faced with a tough situation.

Two weeks ago, a direct family member received worrying findings from a medical test. The findings could mean nothing. Or they could mean everything. We simply didn’t know yet.

The day we got the news, our two sons, my husband and I sat in the living room together and talked about it the way we do: logically, pragmatically, calmly. I was good with this while we were all together. But the moment I found myself alone that afternoon, my mind went somewhere else entirely. As if out of nowhere, it skipped straight past the best case scenario, bypassed everything in between and went directly to the worst possible outcome. And because I’m a visual person, I didn’t just imagine it. I saw it. I heard it. I felt it. The pain, the suffering, the grief.

My first instinct was not to let myself go there. To jump up from the couch, move to another room. Get my mind off the scene I’d just visualised.

Voices from my upbringing

I grew up in Australia in a family with a pragmatic, onwards-and-upwards culture. The voices I heard in my head that afternoon were familiar ones. Think positively. Don’t go there. Don’t think about it until you know more.

Sound familiar? I’d always assumed these were healthy ways to cope with hard news. Sensible advice, passed down with the best of intentions.

But when I thought about it, I realised they’re actually avoidance. Instead of building your capacity to handle difficult things, they just push the hard stuff, and the anxiety with it, further down the road. And in my experience, the tough stuff always shows up eventually, whether you’re ready for it or not.

Why your brain goes straight to the worst case

I remembered my research on the negativity bias: the brain’s natural tendency to focus on and place more emotional weight on negative experiences than positive ones.

For our ancestors living in a world with considerably more ways to die than our comfortable society today, preparing for the worst was survival. Over thousands of years our brains became wired to scan for threats and take them seriously. The negativity bias was part of natural evolution.

My mind racing to the worst possible outcome that afternoon, I decided, wasn’t weakness or dramatisation. It was my brain doing exactly what it’s wired to do. Preparing me to confront the hardest possible outcome.

What is Stoicism?

Marcus Aurelius was a Roman Emperor and General who ruled in the 2nd century AD. Between running an empire and leading armies, he kept a private journal that was never meant to be published. Yet today Meditations remains one of the most honest and quietly powerful books ever written. I think that’s because Aurelius wasn’t writing for anyone. He was journalling his own thoughts, trying to figure out which ones helped him perform best under pressure.

Aurelius was a devoted practitioner of Stoicism, a philosophy built on the simple idea that we can’t control what happens to us, but we can control how we respond to it. Remaining calm under pressure, the Stoics believed, comes from building the mental resilience to meet difficulty head-on.

One of his key practices was premeditatio malorum, Latin for “the premeditation of evils.” Deliberately imagining worst case scenarios before they happen. Mentally rehearsing the toughest outcome. The logic is that if you’ve already contemplated the hard thing in your mind, it loses some of its power to knock you over if and when it actually arrives.

Marcus Aurelius didn’t tell himself think positively or don’t think about it until you know more. He prepared himself for the hardest possible outcome and asked himself how he would meet that outcome with dignity.

That is mental resilience.

What did this mean for me?

I wasn’t hard on myself, for once, for imagining the worst possible outcome. I allowed myself to go there and I felt more at peace knowing my brain was simply doing what it was wired to do.

But I made a conscious decision not to stay there too long.

In my opinion, the distinction is: preparing your mind for the worst case scenario builds mental resilience. Dwelling on it, feeding it and letting it play on repeat does not. That’s where instinctual constructive thoughts become a destructive brain pattern.

The brain rewiring work I write about and practise in my journal every day is about catching these destructive thought patterns when I can, naming them, recognising them as old mental habits rather than reality and consciously replacing them with the feeling of doing something constructive.

I can tell you it’s empowering!

If this resonated with you, I’d love to know. Please leave me a comment, I read and respond to every one of them.

Have a lovely weekend,

- Trina xx

In my last article, I wrote about the research that shows neuroplasticity persists well into our seventies and eighties. How it is absolutely possible to rewire your brain as an adult.

Here I want to get into how to rewire your brain and change negative thought patterns.

Quick disclaimer: I’m on a steep learning curve myself. What follows is what I’ve recently learned from researching the work of three experts from Stanford, UCLA and UC Berkeley who have studied this question.

It started with Eileen Gu.

I was at the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics in February watching the American-Chinese freestyle skiing champion win gold in the Women’s Halfpipe Freeski. The next day, at a press conference, a journalist asked her how she answers complex questions so quickly and comprehensively. She said she spends a significant amount of time in her head: journalling about her thoughts, analysing them, breaking them down, and working like a scientist on modifying them to improve.

This inspired me to make a pact with myself to journal for a year to see if I could rewire my brain. Recording my thoughts every single day.

Well. That certainly opened the floodgates.

I discovered that inside my mind are chains of thoughts that have formed patterns that repeat themselves. And some of them are, quite frankly, unhealthy.

These are thoughts that would have started as a conscious reaction and have been repeated so many times that they’ve become like a well worn path through a wheat field. You automatically go that route without thinking cause it’s easier.

The pattern that stunned me most: when I don’t do something well in everyday life, my thoughts can take a huge leap (if my mind has time to stray there). They go from banal error to damning verdict about my overall intelligence and capability as a person.

A couple of examples that made it into my journal:

I built a fire in our fireplace one evening and it died out quickly. A logical mind might look for the cause: wet wood, not enough kindling or oxygen? Mine interpreted this as evidence that I was not only incapable of making good fires, but incapable of a whole range of things in my life.

Another classic: I was four minutes late picking up my son from the gym. Four minutes. Never mind the hundreds of times I’ve been on time. My brain’s conclusion? I’m incapable of time management and, by extension, an incapable person.

Tough audience.

I’m hoping your self-talk is kinder to you than mine is to me. But honestly? Chances are it’s not, because the negativity bias (first coined by psychologists Paul Rozin and Edward Royzman) affects every single one of us. Your brain is wired to pay more attention to, take more seriously and react more strongly to negative experiences, information and emotions than to positive ones. Not because you’re a pessimist or weak. Because that’s how our brains have learned to detect and deal with threats in order to survive. It’s evolutionary.

On top of this human default setting, clinical anxiety and depression affect around 15% of people at any given time, and up to a third of us will experience either at some point in our lives. But the biggest group - and if you’re reading this, there’s a good chance this is you - sits somewhere between “totally fine” and “mentally unwell.” Most of us are quietly carrying a loop of self critical thoughts, low grade worries and a tendency to replay awkward conversations in the small hours of the morning. We’re functioning, showing up, but doing it with an unnecessarily heavy mental load. This is not a disorder. It’s a brain that hasn’t been shown a better way yet.

So, how do we actually hack our mind and show it a better way?

Three of the world’s most respected researchers in this field approached this question from completely different angles, and came up with practical strategies on how to rewire the brain.

One thing they all agree on is that our brains form grooves. Thoughts you think repeatedly become the paths of least resistance. Redirecting those grooves can be done but it takes repetition and time.

Rick Hanson, psychologist and neuroplasticity researcher from UC Berkeley, came up with a four step process to change thoughts:

1. Notice something that feels good, even something small

2. Really pay attention to it and stay with it

3. Let it sink in for 10 to 20 seconds

4. Connect it to a negative thought you want to replace

The crucial insight is that having the experience isn’t enough. You have to consciously stay with the positive experience long enough for your brain to actually wire it in before moving on. Without that step, the insight evaporates.

Jeffrey Schwartz, a research psychiatrist at UCLA, says the troubling thought is not you. It’s just your brain doing its overprotective thing. His four steps are designed to create distance between you and the thought, and then redirect your attention elsewhere:

1. Name the thought for what it is. An automatic thought sequence, not a fact

2. Remind yourself it's not reality, just your brain following its default path

3. Shift your focus to something useful instead

4. Over time, the thought simply loses its power over you

Neuroscientist from Stanford University Andrew Huberman, adds the piece that nobody talks about enough: the actual rewiring doesn’t happen while you’re doing the work. It happens while you sleep. Rest is when your brain physically lays down the new wiring.

To make it simpler, here’s a summary that merges how these experts say you can rewire harmful thoughts. I’ve included examples from my fire dying out case above.

1. Notice and name the thought

When a negative thought appears, simply observe it. Name what’s happening. e.g. My fire went out and my brain interpreted this to mean that I’m incapable.

2. Separate yourself from it

Remind yourself: this thought is not a fact and it is not you. It’s just your brain running an old pattern. e.g. The fire went out. That’s it. That’s the whole story. Everything after that was my brain making things up.

3. Redirect your attention deliberately

Consciously shift your focus to something constructive - an action, a task, anything useful. This is the moment the rewiring begins. e.g. Go find drier wood or look up how to build a better fire.

4. Hold and absorb the better feeling

This is the step most people skip. When you feel something good, even something small, stay with the feeling for 10 to 20 seconds. Let it sink in. e.g. When the fire eventually catches again, notice how that feels and sit with it.

5. Sleep

The actual rewiring happens while you rest. Skimping on sleep means skimping on results. While you sleep, your brain processes the whole thing and rewires.

6. Repeat

New thought patterns only become automatic through consistent repetition. This is a daily practice. The old groove doesn’t disappear overnight, but every time you do this, the new pathway gets a little stronger.

I’m working on it daily and will let you know how it goes.

Please leave me a comment if this resonated with you, or you have any questions or feedback.

Happy Easter and thanks again for supporting my work!

- Trina xx

The sun was smiling, as if apologising for the snowstorm and poor visibility the previous afternoon that had prevented the event from being held. Snow had fallen overnight, and the morning light caught the fresh flakes, glittering like diamonds scattered across the white. All was forgiven.

Man, it felt good to be an Aussie that day. Watching Melbourne teenager Indra Brown give it everything at her first Olympic Games. What stirred my spirit wasn’t so much her fifth place finish (already extraordinary for a 16 year old schoolgirl) it was the mental power and resilience of a teenager who remained calm and laser-focused under massive pressure.

In the halfpipe, competitors get three runs. Only the best one counts. Brown’s first run was conservative. Technically skilled, but she didn’t have the amplitude, and the judges seemed to be rewarding speed and height that day. Her second pushed further: same technical precision, more height, more speed. She scored mid-field, arguably underscored. On her third run, she went all out. She flipped so high on one combination that the crowd erupted. One of her combinations included a 1080 - three complete spins. The judges rewarded it, and she moved up to fifth.

Brown later said “I tried to build every run.” She had executed on her objective far more effectively than a sixteen year old ought to be able to.

But the event belonged to Eileen Gu, the American-Chinese world number one. Her combinations were in a different stratosphere - technically near-perfect. In the curves of the halfpipe she picked up speed and reached a height that was on another level. And she landed solidly. Watching her in person was magical.

The day after she won gold, at a press conference, a reporter asked Gu: “Do you think before you speak?” observing how quickly and comprehensively she fields complex questions.

That’s when she said the words that went viral.

“You can control what you think. Like, you can control how you think and therefore, you can control who you are. And especially as a young person - I’m twenty-two - with neuroplasticity on my side, I can literally become exactly who I want to be. How cool is that? How empowering, right?”

- Eileen Gu, 23 February 2026

There’s nothing new about elite athletes working with leading sports psychologists to build mental resilience. Tennis player Novak Djokovic has talked about using mindfulness and conscious breathing when self-doubt creeps in. And swimmer Michael Phelps famously talked about the intense visualisations he used to prepare for every possible race scenario, so he responds calmly when things go wrong - like when his goggles filled with water in an olympic final.

What struck me about Eileen Gu is something different. She talked about using neuroplasticity not just to bounce back with mental resilience, but to intentionally become exactly the person she wants to be.

In the same press conference, she said:

“I journal a lot. I break down all of my thought processes. I apply a very analytical lens to my own thinking. It’s almost in a tinkering, scientist kind of way. I’m always trying to modify. I’m trying to think, ‘How can I be better? How can I approach my own brain the way that I approach my craft of freeskiing?’”

That’s the bit that stoked my passion. Because this is aligned exactly with my mission at Trina’s Way - to inspire people to work on improving their mental health. The idea that we can all work with neuroplasticity to rewire our brains to create new neural pathways to become exactly who we want to be had never occurred to me.

But can you rewire your brain as an adult?

Before you say “I’m not twenty-two with neuroplasticity on my side”. I said exactly the same thing. Interestingly, here’s what the research says.

A 2018 study from Columbia University, published in Cell Stem Cell, found that healthy older adults can produce as many new brain cells as younger people. Neuroplasticity doesn’t become rigid after your twenties. It persists well into our seventies and eighties.

Good news for those of us on the other side of fifty from Eileen Gu.

I’m also living proof that it can be done. Ten years ago I committed to running thirty to sixty minutes every second day, consistently. No excuses. Six weeks in, both of my business partners of the software company I founded asked me, unprompted, what I’d done to change so dramatically. They said I’d become more consistent, clearer-headed, a stronger leader.

Then two and a half years ago, I did a three-day psychedelic therapy retreat which went even deeper - creating new neural pathways that changed the way I think about a trauma I’ve carried since childhood.

The brain can change. At any age. I’ve experienced it firsthand.

If you’re curious to learn more about neuroplasticity and how it can be used to build more mental muscle here are two articles: one from the Cleveland Clinic and another from the Mayo Clinic.

So after watching that press conference, I made a pact with myself.

To journal every day for one year. I’ve begun by writing down the unhelpful - and sometimes outright destructive - thoughts I have each day. I note the time, the context, what was happening when a thought appeared. My plan is to read back on them, look for the patterns, and work on what I can improve.

I’m only ten days in, so I don’t have many insights yet. But I can tell you this: when I woke at 3:26am this morning - that delightful window when my mind tends to wander into the worst neighbourhood in my head and pick a fight with stray thoughts - I had a spontaneous vision. My brain had a membrane around it. A purple membrane. A fine net, catching the harmful thoughts before they could land.

I have no idea where that came from. But it worked. I got back to sleep without being pushed around by my own thoughts.

I want to use this practice as an experiment in self-directed change. I’ll write about the results here, in the hope it inspires others.

I want to prove that you don’t need to be an Olympic champion, a twenty two year old, or a Stanford student to use brain plasticity to rewire your brain and become stronger and more resilient mentally. You just need to have the will to work on improving your thoughts.

In my last post, Psychedelic Therapy is Changing Lives, I talked about the depression that crept up on me almost three years ago, a result of the ADHD medication I was taking at the time. During recovery, I learnt about psychedelic therapy, which grabbed me by the hand and took me on a journey of research that eventually led to ETI (Experiential Training Institute), a leader in psilocybin-assisted therapy in the Netherlands.

I decided I wanted to do their 3-day psychedelic therapy retreat.

After filling out their initial questionnaire, I was invited to a full assessment interview online with the founders, Dr. Hans van Wechem and Jeanine Souren. They asked me, among other things, whether I’d ever had an epileptic fit or a psychotic episode - two conditions that can exclude someone from participation. I had not.

The retreat was set for late October 2023. In the two months leading up, the eight of us who’d be attending met twice online. We introduced ourselves and shared what had brought us there. Most people were navigating specific traumas that had names - grief, divorce. Mine also had a name: childhood sexual abuse. I’ve never struggled to talk openly about myself, but this was a topic I’d only ever shared with a few people closest to my heart. I found the others surprisingly open about their trauma. I felt safe to share.

The Week Before

We were sent a list of dietary and lifestyle guidelines to follow in the week before the retreat. No meat or fish, no caffeine or sugar, no spicy, greasy, or strong-smelling food. No NSAID painkillers, stimulants, sedatives, or muscle relaxants. No alcohol, cannabis, or other drugs for at least a week prior.

Recommended? At least 30 minutes of exercise a day, herbal teas such as mint, ginger, rooibos or chamomile, an abundant vegetarian diet, good hydration - plenty of water and coconut water and foods that have a nausea reducing effect such as potatoes, ginger, mint and lemon.

Day One: Preparation

We arrived on a Friday morning to a Dutch farm in Culemborg. The autumn air had that countryside smell - clean and cool. Our cabins were a series of light-framed wooden structures, tastefully decorated in organic rustic Dutch country style, with wild flowers and river reeds bunched in vases.

The first day was preparation, held in a Mongolian-style yurt. We worked as a group to discuss our intentions, then broke into smaller groups of three - two participants and one therapist. We took turns doing an exercise called Lifeline, where we reconstructed the emotional milestones of our lives. Painted Russian Matryoshka dolls were lined up to represent us at different ages. Our hearts and minds were being prepared to open up to the stuff we came here for.

That evening, we ate a light vegetarian meal together, then one by one we stepped outside into a cold bath, a large wooden barrel, in the open autumn air. We did three minutes in, then 15 minutes thawing out in a wooden Finnish sauna pod. It relaxed us. That night I slept in a new bed, in a foreign silence, for a full eight hours.

Day Two: The Dosing

For breakfast, we were offered the option of skipping it entirely or eating a boiled potato.

The potato seemed too good to turn down.

Jeanine told us we’d been eating plants from the ground - potatoes, carrots, turnips. Foods that, like psilocybin truffles, come from below the soil. The logic being they’d sit quietly together in our digestive system.

We ground our 25mg dose of psilocybin truffles in a mortar and pestle with lemon juice, ginger, honey and some spices. It tasted like what it was: truffle paste with lemon, ginger and honey. Not terrible.

We ate in silence, then walked single file through the garden to the yurt. Each of us settled onto the same mattress we’d claimed the day before. We had a blanket, a padded black eye mask and headphones with music. The mattresses radiated outward with our heads towards the edges of the yurt, like the points of a compass.

A woman in the group had mentioned to me earlier that Dr. van Wechem - the psychiatrist and co-founder of ETI - was a DJ in medical school, and that he still mixes the music himself for every dosing session. “They call him the DJ of the soul,” she’d said. I took it lightly at the time and thought it sounded cool. Later I would understand just how important the role of music is in guiding us through the journey.

We’d been told: when the experience comes, don’t fight it. Go into it. Visualise yourself diving in like you’re entering water you trust.

What Happened

The first thing I saw was my family home. The house where my trauma had occurred, while my parents were away on a trip, when I was very young.

No one was there. I opened my bedroom door, felt the weight of it, heard it creak from the resistance of the hinges. I walked in. Touched the duvet’s blue and red alphabet-print cotton. Smelled the fabric. Saw the matching blind with its blue plastic pull-handle stitched at the base. Felt the old grey wool of the wiry carpet under my bare feet. It was a full sensory experience in a place I hadn’t been back to for more than 50 years.

I knew I needed more time there. But a wave of psychedelic colour came towards me in a rush, and I did what we’d been told to do. I let go of caution and dove in.

What followed was pure beauty (at the risk of sounding like a cliché). The world was white. I painted it with colours that brought it to life. I saw bronze sculptures and fine glasswork of extraordinary beauty. I wove exquisite textiles so fine they were almost transparent. I was an artist, a craftsman and observer. I remember feeling deeply fulfilled.

Coming out the other side, I sat up and looked through the small yurt door window at the grass outside. The green of it was electric and alive, vibrating. And then someone in the group started laughing - a belly laugh with abandon. It was contagious, and within moments it spread like wildfire, catching each of us until we were all in hysterics, laughing at nothing.

Then I wanted to cry.

One of the therapists appeared beside me with a pen and paper, as if they’d known. Without thinking, I began writing a letter to my mother. Forgiving her for not being there when the trauma happened. Forgiving her for not knowing what to do when I was twenty-one and told her what I had remembered. I hadn’t known, until that moment, that I was holding any of this inside. She had been a devoted, loving mother to her four children and we loved her deeply.

Four months later, back in Sydney, my mother - out of nowhere - broke down crying and begged for my forgiveness for not knowing what to do. She talked about the nights she would wake up to find me, as a little girl, lying on the floor next to her bed. She said if she’d known what had happened to me she would have slept in my room.

I never gave her the letter. She was beyond that stage in life.

By late afternoon, more than six hours after we’d begun, a few of us gathered outside in the garden. The psilocybin was receding, but our senses were still on high alert. Every sound had an edge to it. The wind moved through the grasses and I could hear each blade and feel each molecule of air moving through my mouth, into my lungs, feeding the cells of my body.

That evening we all sat around the fire pit and told our stories. Mostly we laughed. Occasionally someone said something vulnerable and tender, and the laughing stopped.

That night I slept nine hours in the cool air, darkness and absolute silence.

Day Three: Integration

Morning began with a walk along the Lek River, wide and slow-moving through flat, low-lying farmland. It was bordered by grassy dykes and willow branches trailing in the current.

After breakfast, we gathered to share our experiences with the therapists and psychiatrist. One man’s account stayed with me. He’d been through a recent divorce, and when the psychedelic wave rose to meet him, he hadn’t felt safe diving in. He’d watched from the edge instead, like a man standing outside a lit window full of people. He could see the warmth and energy, but didn’t enter. The night before, around the fire, he’d been the only one still visibly closed to the rest of us. Now he spoke quietly about wanting to come back, to try again, to learn to dive in.

We returned to the yurt for the integration session. Our senses were still raw that morning. The grass still had voltage to it.

We lay down on our mattresses. Same places, same headphones, same eye mask, different music. This time we worked with our breath. Long, deliberate inhales, then exhales released hard and fast, with no breath held. A controlled hyperventilation that, in combination with the music, guided us into another journey.

And in that breathing session, for a full hour, I saw her.

My four-year-old self. Long hair loose and flying. Dancing for herself. Wildly, uninhibited, without shame.

She knew everything was broken. Her trust. Her freedom. Her childhood. She knew, but she chose to dance anyway.

Around her, I could see all of us; my husband, our sons, my brothers and sister and their partners and children, my parents, my closest friends. All of us there, in her corner, cheering her on.

She didn’t look at us. Didn’t even acknowledge us.

She just danced.

I still have the stone I chose from the basket they passed around after the deep breathing, an anchor to remind us of the new way we were beginning to see ourselves. It sits beside my bed. On the days when I get confused because my mind starts racing and I feel overwhelmed, I come back to the image of her, that little four-year-old girl, with her wild hair and her conviction that the shame was not hers to carry, it was his.

The taxi back to the station was quiet. I had nothing left to give. I felt scraped clean - not empty, but numb from emotional overload. Three days had lifted a shame I hadn’t fully understood I was carrying: the shame of what had happened to me as a child.

There was still integration work ahead. There always is. But for now, it was more than enough.

Trina xx

Here’s the article about my personal story.

After my recent post “Psychedelic Therapy is Changing Lives”, many of you reached out to ask: Is it safe? How does it work? Could it help me?

I took your questions to the experts: Psychiatrist Dr. Hans van Wechem and Psychologist Jeanine Souren, the founders of ETI (Experiential Training Institute), who are leading the way in psilocybin-assisted therapy in the Netherlands.

In this episode we cover everything from how psilocybin works in the brain, to who it’s for (and who it’s not for), bad trips, the critical integration phase, OCD, treatment-resistant depression and where this field is heading in the next decade.

Here are timestamps for my questions in the video:

00:00 - Introduction

00:36 - What Is Psychedelic Therapy?

02:02 - Why Do Psychiatrists Work With Psychedelic Therapy?

03:36 - How Do Psychedelics Work In The Brain?

05:54 - What Are The Three Phases of Psychedelic Therapy?

08:44 - Why Is The Integration Phase So Important?

09:50 - How Does The Psilocybin Dosing Session Work?

12:44 - What Is A Bad Trip?

14:52 - How Effective Is Psilocybin For Depression And Anxiety?

16:40 - How Safe Is Psilocybin?

17:39 - Who Is Psychedelic Therapy For?

19:48 - Who Shouldn’t Do Psychedelic Therapy? What Are The Risks?

22:30 - Is Psychedelic Therapy Effective For OCD?

24:46 - Do People Need More Than One Dosing Session?

27:20 - What Are The Misconceptions About Psychedelics?

29:04 - What Do You Do Differently To Other Retreats?

32:18 - What Can Psychedelic Therapy Offer That Traditional Therapy Can’t?

36:03 - Where Is Psychedelic Therapy Going In The Next 5-10 Years?

37:51 - What Still Surprises You About Psychedelic Therapy?

40:12 - How To Find Out If Psychedelic Therapy Might Be Right For You?

40:57 - Outro

If you saw my earlier post about my failed experiment with ADHD prescription drugs, you’ll have read it was the fallout from the medicine I was taking. I stopped taking it the moment I realised it was impacting my mental health. In the weeks that followed, I had to go back to taking one day at a time - the way I’d learnt during a major depression almost two decades earlier. I put a mental barrier up to my thoughts, visualising it like a solid wall blocking thoughts about the past and future. I had learned to visualise the confines of only the present day. It’s all I can cope with when I’m mentally unwell. It took about six weeks before I felt released from the clutch of that black dog.

Discovering Psychedelics

In the following weeks, I was talking to a close friend about my depression and he mentioned that psychedelic therapy was producing transformative results for sufferers of depression. He told me about a Canadian company leading the way in medically supervised psychedelic therapy for sufferers of anxiety, depression, PTSD/PTSI, OCD and more.

I researched the company and discovered their Medical Director, a Dutch Psychiatrist named Dr. Hans van Wechem and their Psychologist Jeanine Souren, had launched their own program in Holland called ETI (Experiential Training Institute). Dr. van Wechem’s credentials made me want to know more - 30+ years of experience as a Psychiatrist, specialising in childhood trauma and attachment disorders and years of experience guiding hundreds of clients through psilocybin therapy.

This group was working in the Dutch countryside, just a short flight from our home in northern Italy.

My Research into Psychedelic Therapy

Why had I never heard about psychedelic therapy before if it was so effective for depression? I’d been hospitalised with severe anxiety and depression in Sydney at the end of 2002 at a leading Australian clinic. I’d read numerous books by leading authors on the subject and spoken countless times to experts in the field. No one had ever mentioned psychedelics.

I wanted to know more.

I watched the Netflix series How to Change Your Mind, where author Michael Pollan explores the history and use of psychedelics. Each episode focuses on a different drug - LSD, psilocybin, MDMA. Then I read Pollan’s book by the same name. I listened to the podcast from the Huberman Lab How Psilocybin Can Rewire Our Brain, Its Therapeutic Benefits & Its Risks by Dr. Andrew Huberman.

I also watched an Australian Story episode from the ABC called Changing Minds about Lindy Bok, an Australian woman who participated in the country’s first psychedelic-assisted therapy trial to help her deal with anxiety about her impending death from terminal illness.

What are Psychedelics

From my research, I learnt that psychedelics can modify the psyche and change our level of consciousness. They can change our perception of the outside world, but also our inner world, which means we can learn to see ourselves differently.

The science behind how psychedelics work is seriously interesting but I prefer not to go into it as I’m not a Scientist or Doctor. If you are considering this therapy, it’s fascinating doing your own research into psychedelics and you’ll learn more about what they are and how they might help you.

Thousands of documented cases show psychedelic therapy has been used successfully to treat mental health issues such as depression, PTSD, alcohol abuse disorder and various addictions, as well as OCD and eating disorders.

A Chance Meeting with a Therapist and Shaman

A month later, and midway through Pollan’s book, our family flew to Indonesia for a diving holiday. At Bali airport, we got stuck in an immigration queue that was so long it seemed to stretch into the Never Never.

I struck up a conversation with a British woman next to us who had a warmth about her. Within minutes, she told me she was a licensed therapist and a shaman.

Then she said something that locked my attention into hyperfocus: she was working with a psychiatrist who administers psilocybin for psychedelic therapy. She was handling the preparation work before the dosing sessions and the integration work afterward - the before-and-after work that is so crucial to the effectiveness of psychedelic therapy.

Fate was kind to me that day. The customs queue was more than two hours long. Ignoring my husband and two boys’ occasional questions about our holiday plans, I picked this wonderful open-minded lady’s brain about psychedelic therapy until we arrived .

“I Have a Friend…”

I told her I had “a friend” suffering from depression who was considering psychedelic therapy in Holland. Her face told me she knew who my “friend” was.

She told me something important I hadn’t heard in my earlier research: that people who’ve suffered childhood trauma can get stuck in the middle of processing it, unable to move through to the next stage of recovery. This can lead to serious mental health problems. Psychedelic therapy, she said, can access trauma blocked deeply in the brain and body quickly and effectively. This helps sufferers process the trauma and alter their self-image so they begin to see themselves in a new light and move past the trauma.

She emphasised that my “friend” should only work with experienced professionals who follow the universal protocol for psychedelic therapy, basically:

Preparation sessions – building trust with therapists, screening for psychological illnesses such as epilepsy and psychosis that might prevent people from being allowed treatment, setting intentions and discussing expectations

Dosing session – usually 6-8 hours lying down, using eye shades and music, with a therapist present the entire time ready to accompany the person when they need to get up and walk

Integration sessions – processing “The Journey” and weaving the insights into everyday life

By the time our holiday ended, I had booked a 3-day retreat at the Experiential Training Institute for October 2023 in Culemborg, southeast of Amsterdam.

Thirty Lost Years of Psychedelic Therapy

So why had I never heard about psychedelic therapy earlier?

Psychedelics were legitimate medical tools worldwide from the 1950s to early 1970s. Thousands of studies showed real promise for treating depression, PTSD, alcoholism and end-of-life anxiety.

Then the counterculture explosion happened. Recreational drug use went mainstream, governments panicked, and by the early 1970s, the whole thing got shut down - including the legitimate medical research.

The renaissance began in 2006 when Johns Hopkins published a rigorous psilocybin study that reopened the conversation. Other serious institutions like Imperial College London started research again.

The difference now? Stricter protocols have been introduced with better screening and psychological support.

2002 was still in the dark ages, years before the second wave of research began the renaissance in psychedelic therapy.

Where Things Stand Now

Australia made history in 2023 as one of the first countries to authorise psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression and MDMA for PTSD. But it’s strictly medical, expensive ($20,000+), and extremely limited in availability.

The US remains federally illegal, though Oregon and Colorado have legalised supervised therapy with trained facilitators rather than doctors.

The Netherlands leads Europe with legal psilocybin truffles, allowing retreat centres like ETI to operate openly outside clinical restrictions. Today Holland hosts some of the world’s leading research institutes studying psychedelic therapy.

After losing three decades to the government’s war on drugs, we’re finally getting a second chance to use these substances legitimately for mental health treatment.

What Comes Next

I’ll share my personal experience at the 3-day retreat I attended in October 2023 with ETI in an upcoming post. It was deeply personal, and it fundamentally changed the way I see the trauma I suffered as a child. It was a life-changing positive experience for me.

However, I want to stress again that I’m sharing my personal lived experience. Everyone is different and what worked for me is based on my brain and body. You should seek advice from your healthcare expert before signing up for psychedelic therapy.

Here’s what I think: I’ve never been someone who saw any value in recreational drugs. They never made any sense to me.

But after my lived experience with psychedelic therapy guided by experienced professionals and the research I’ve done on psychedelics, I believe strongly in the power of this therapy to heal depression and other mental health disorders.

Coming Soon: My First Podcast Interview on Psychedelic Therapy

As promised, I’m adding podcasts to Trina’s Way in 2025. I’ve secured my first interview at the end of January with the two founders of ETI (Experiential Training Institute) in Holland, Psychiatrist Dr. Hans van Wechem and Psychologist Jeanine Souren. The two founders together have years of experience offering psychedelic therapy to thousands of people. I’m excited about bringing you their experience and insights.

If you’ve been searching for something that actually works for your depression, or if you’re curious about this treatment, stay tuned.

This conversation might matter to you.

Do you have questions about psychedelic therapy? Drop them in the comments below - I’ll address what I can or bring them up in my interview with the Founders of ETI, Dr. van Wechem and Jeanine Souren.

Important note: I’m sharing my research and personal lived experience, which should not be taken as medical advice. Psychedelic therapy requires professional supervision and isn’t legal everywhere or right for everyone. Please consult qualified healthcare providers to determine what’s appropriate for your unique situation.

Readers sent messages suggesting other approaches that work. And I have more. So here are five more evidence-backed therapies that actually work - numbers six through ten.

6. Saunas and Cold Water Immersion

The first time I tried cold water therapy, I nearly froze my toosh off doing 12 minutes in 12-degree water. This was three years ago when cold plunge pools were still rare and I’d found the only gym near my home on Lake Maggiore in Italy with a cold water plunge and a sauna. My ADHD doctor had said the basic rule was to immerse yourself for approximately the same number of minutes as the water temperature. My brain took this literally. I forced myself through sheer bloody grit to stay in that pool for 12 minutes. I’d also read that cold water immersion can increase the thyroid-stimulating hormone TSH and improve thyroid function, so I lowered myself up to my chin.

The first minute in cold water is always brutal while your body adjusts. After three or four minutes, numbness makes it easier. The only problem in the gym was that Italian men (interestingly there were very few women) kept dunking in and out of the cold plunge before scuttling back to the sauna, creating movement that made the cold water feel sharper. On a later visit when I managed to convince my intrepid Australian girlfriend to come, her teeth chattered after the first man jumped in and out. “Per favore non fate movimento!” “Please don’t make movement!” she begged the next poor fellow as he was about to dip in. He looked confused.

During those first visits to the cold bath, I built myself up in my head to be some superwoman thinking that I was able to stick it out in that cold water longer than the men. Then I learned you only need three to four minutes to get the same benefits.

I discovered the benefits of saunas that first day out of survival. After 12 minutes, I could barely walk on my curled-up frozen feet and needed to thaw out fast. Instinctively I hobbled to the sauna.

Later I learned that what I was doing had a name - fire-and-ice or contrast therapy. It’s a combination of moving between extreme cold and heat. And I learnt you should start with the sauna heat before immersing in the cold water and always finish on cold - letting your body warm itself back up naturally.

This fire-and-ice combination is the quickest fix I’ve found for shifting anxiety and reaching a state of relaxation. Research says it trains your nervous system to switch between stress and calm, building resilience. When you alternate between sauna heat and cold water, your body releases norepinephrine, dopamine and endorphins - chemicals in the brain that short-circuit anxious feelings, lift mood and sharpen your focus.

What I found particularly interesting was that I had spent years trying to calm down my anxiety through meditation and slow breathing, often unsuccessfully. But pushing my body the other way - into real discomfort and stress - gives my heart something legitimate to pound about and actually works better. My body recalibrates and I’m left calmer than any slowing down relaxing exercise ever did.

A weird irony about anxiety is that anxious people are often the most calm under stress. Give me a real threat and I’ll handle it with clarity. Give me a perceived threat and I fall apart.

I’m assuming you’re a more measured person than me when starting something new, so my advice is to start small. End your shower with 30 seconds of cold water, gradually building up to three to four minutes before trying the cold water immersion. For women, the latest research actually shows water at 15°C (59°F) provides the full benefits - there’s no need to go colder.

7. Deep Breathing: Training Your Nervous System

A leading integrative doctor once told me a cornerstone of good health was oxygenating the body’s cells and getting blood circulating. He claimed I’d become 200% more intelligent doing deep breathing for an hour daily. After two months of oxygenating my cells daily, I asked my dad if he’d noticed I was any smarter. He looked at me blankly and called out to my mum, “Gwen, have we noticed Trina’s more intelligent lately?” “Hmmm, don’t think so,” she called back.

Deep breathing techniques like the Wim Hof method flood your body with oxygen while lowering carbon dioxide, creating a powerful shift. This controlled breathing directly influences your autonomic nervous system, triggering endorphin release and reducing cortisol. It activates the vagus nerve (remember I talked about my vagus nerve stimulator in my last blog), calming your entire system and regulating mood (source).

Studies show people practicing Wim Hof breathing experienced significant reductions in depressive symptoms, anxiety and stress. They felt more alert, focused and energised.

8. Spend Time in Nature

Almost too simple, but the evidence is overwhelming: time in nature improves mental health.

Japanese researchers studying “forest bathing” (shinrin-yoku) found that spending time in forests lowers cortisol, reduces blood pressure and decreases anxiety and depression symptoms. Even 20 minutes can significantly improve mood and cognitive function (source).

Trees and plants release phytoncides - organic compounds that boost our immune system and reduce stress hormones when we breathe them in.

One study found that a 90-minute walk in nature decreased activity in the brain area associated with rumination - that repetitive negative thinking that fuels depression and anxiety. In my previous post about the relationship between anxiety and ADHD, I called it worry snowballing.

You don’t need wilderness. City parks work. Gardens work. Even looking at trees through a window has measurable benefits.

9. Spend Time with Animals

This suggestion came from my reader Nigel Littlewood and it made me realise the chemical changes I feel when I sit down and give our dog Milo a proper pat.

Now that my boys are teenagers with their own lives, Milo has become a solid companion while I work at home. He’s sleeping under my desk as I write, grunting every now and then because I’m working instead of outdoors running with him.

Research backs this completely. Interacting with animals increases oxytocin (known as the “love hormone”), decreases cortisol and lowers blood pressure. Pet owners have lower depression rates and feel less lonely than people who don’t own pets.

One study found that just ten minutes of petting a dog or cat significantly reduces stress hormones. Another study showed therapy dogs in psychiatric settings help reduce anxiety and improve mood more effectively than therapy sessions without animals.

If you don’t have a pet, maybe you could volunteer at an animal shelter, visit friends with animals or watch wildlife?

10. Get Out in the Sunshine Every Day

My ADHD doctor once mentioned that the UN’s World Happiness Report showed Finns are among the happiest people in the world. “Finland?” I said. “But there’s barely any sun there.” “True,” he replied, “but Finns know this, so as soon as the sun appears, they go straight out into it.”

Sunlight impacts mental health through multiple pathways. It triggers vitamin D production - low levels are strongly linked to depression and ADHD (source).

But sunlight does more. It regulates your circadian rhythm - your body’s internal clock. Morning sunlight signals your brain it’s time to be awake and alert, helping you feel energised during the day and sleep better at night. Disrupted circadian rhythms are both a cause and symptom of depression (source).

Sunlight exposure also increases serotonin production in the brain. Studies show a direct correlation between sunshine hours and serotonin levels.

Research indicates 10 to 30 minutes of midday sunlight several times weekly maintains healthy vitamin D levels (depending on your skin tone, location and season). Even on overcast days, outdoor light is significantly brighter than indoor lighting and provides benefits.

Your Complete List

So here’s the full lineup based on my trial and error, extensive research and your suggestions:

1. Regular cardio exercise - 30 to 60 minutes daily

2. Prioritise sleep - seven to nine hours nightly

3. Reduce alcohol intake - optimal is zero

4. Anti-inflammatory diet - seeds, nuts, berries, fatty fish, leafy greens, olive oil, turmeric, ginger, green tea and more

5. Spend time with people - genuine connection matters

6. Fire and ice therapy - sauna to cold water immersion

7. Deep breathing - daily practice such as the Wim Hof method

8. Spend time in nature - regular immersion in natural settings

9. Spend time with animals - pets, therapy animals or wildlife

10. Get out in the sunshine - daily outdoor light exposure

I’m heading off in a few days on a family holiday for Christmas and won’t be posting again until the new year. When I return, I’ll be launching something new - podcasts interviewing experts in these therapies and the latest research on anxiety, depression and ADHD.

We’re travelling to Japan for Christmas and I’m excited to explore the birthplace of shinrin-yoku (forest bathing). Trying to line up an interview with a forest therapy expert there.

A warm and heartfelt thank you for being part of this community and supporting me in my new project Trina’s Way. Your suggestions, comments and messages make this work so much more meaningful for me.

Happy holidays and see you in the new year!

- Trina

Over the decades I’ve tried almost every natural therapy known for managing anxiety and depression. While plenty of things help, nothing has ever come close to the profound, life-altering impact of a consistent daily exercise regime. I first started running when I was diagnosed with a chronic anxiety disorder and depression in my late 20s. A few years later, a top anxiety specialist in Australia told me that jogging was as powerful for managing my anxiety as antidepressants. I was running, but sporadically - some weeks four or five times, others not at all.

Years later, as CEO of the software company I founded in Italy, I read Charles Duhigg’s book The Power of Habit and learned that forming regular positive habits has a flow-over effect to all areas of your life. I made a promise to myself: run 45-60 minutes every second morning and do lower impact cardio on alternate days (yoga, stretching, abs, weights). This morning routine gave me structure that had a profound impact on reducing my anxiety and, though I didn’t know it at the time, also on my ADHD.

About two months after I started this “keystone habit” (Charles Duhigg’s name for positive habits) my two business partners asked me what I had done to change so dramatically. They told me I’d become “a great leader,” easier to work with and way more consistent (I never dared ask if I’d been even half decent before, I just took the compliment).

Six months ago during the summer, my 21-year-old Australian godson visited us in Italy with four high school friends. On the last afternoon, the boys were telling stories about their school year living in the mountains. They came alive recounting antics, laughing and teasing each other while my sons listened, gripped. All the boys were engaged, except one who didn’t say a word.

I’d observed he wasn’t the shy type, so that afternoon when we were alone in the kitchen, I asked, “Are you ok?”

“No, not really,” he replied earnestly. “I’ve been having panic attacks for the first time in my life and I don’t know what to do.”

I told him I had a lifelong history of anxiety and asked if I could make some suggestions. In the five minutes alone before the others returned, I gave him three simple pieces of advice: start exercising every day, prioritise sleep and reduce alcohol intake.

Two months later, this young man texted me word-for-word: “...my anxiety has lifted and I’ve been running every morning and it feels like I’ve got my personality back. You have no idea how much that means to me.”

Readers, you have no idea how much it meant to me to receive his text. It was the reason I started this Substack.

Why Exercise Is the Game-Changer

Science backs up why regular exercise transformed both my life and my godson’s friend’s. A mountain of studies show that regular exercise literally changes your brain chemistry. It increases production of BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor), which is like fertiliser for your brain. Harvard Psychiatrist Dr. John Ratey, author of Spark, calls exercise “Miracle-Gro for the brain.” It doesn’t just feel good - it actually helps grow new brain cells and strengthen neural connections, particularly in areas that regulate mood and attention.

Earlier this year I read Outlive by Dr. Peter Attia, a leading voice in longevity medicine. His decades of research led him to conclude that exercise is the single most important factor in increasing health span (the number of years you live healthily). He says it’s even more important than nutrition and sleep.

This combination of lived experience, research and expert opinions has led me to conclude that the number one way to reduce anxiety and depression is to start a routine of regular cardio exercise. For me it’s running, but there are plenty of others - walking, cycling, swimming, dancing, rowing. Anything that gets you moving continuously and elevates your heart rate. The best cardio is simply the one you’ll actually do consistently.

The Gut-Brain Connection

The most interesting area of mental health research today is inflammation of the brain and gut. A growing body of research shows that inflammation plays a fundamental role in mental health, with some experts now describing depression as an inflammatory disorder. This is rewriting what we understand about anxiety, depression, and ADHD. For 50+ years, experts treated these as purely brain chemistry problems - low serotonin, dopamine imbalances - but emerging research shows these may actually be downstream effects of systemic inflammation originating in the gut.

Our gut produces 90% of our body’s serotonin and communicates directly with our brain through the vagus nerve and immune system. When gut inflammation occurs, inflammatory molecules travel to the brain and trigger neuroinflammation, directly impacting mood and cognition. This explains why so many people with mental health conditions also have digestive issues.

Learning about this led me to Dr. Will Bulsiewicz’s book Fibre Fuelled. The core message: dietary fibre feeds your gut microbiome which consists of trillions of bacteria that profoundly impact your overall health, from inflammation and immunity to mental wellbeing. When these bacteria digest fibre from plant foods, they produce beneficial compounds that keep your body functioning optimally.

Dr. Bulsiewicz’s “eat the rainbow” concept emphasises that different coloured plants contain different types of fibre and nutrients, which feed different bacterial species. Eating a diverse range of plant foods (he says to aim for 30 different types per week) creates a more resilient microbiome. Basically, the way to develop a well-fed, diverse gut microbiome is through abundant, colourful plant variety.

Sleep

I’ve had a love-fear relationship with sleep. I love sleeping when I’m mentally well and fear not being able to sleep when I’m anxious. The impact of sleep on mental health is widely known. Sleep is when your brain does its housekeeping, clearing out toxins, consolidating memories and regulating the neurotransmitters that control your mood. When you’re sleep-deprived, your amygdala (the brain’s anxiety center) becomes 60% more reactive, which explains why everything feels more overwhelming after a bad night’s sleep.

My Functional Medicine Journey

Earlier this year I worked with a functional medicine doctor online for six months. Functional medicine takes a deep dive into what’s actually going on in your body to cause dysfunctions such as anxiety, ADHD and more. It identifies and eliminates the specific triggers causing inflammation, whether that’s food sensitivities, bacterial imbalances or nutrient deficiencies.

I couldn’t sustain it long-term. It was prohibitively expensive, and the amount of testing required became complex and time-consuming. For people balancing daily life with work and parenting, it’s difficult to maintain a severely strict diet, copious amounts of costly supplements and regular complex expensive testing.

However, there were powerful takeaways.

I followed an anti-inflammatory diet rigorously for four months, basically eating only unprocessed foods and eliminating alcohol, caffeine, sugar, gluten, lactose, artificial additives, and processed foods. It wasn’t socially friendly, but it made me regular as clockwork each morning. For the first time in my life, I could press into my tummy where my intestine is without feeling pain. My skin also started glowing like it hadn’t since I had that natural healthy glow of youth.

Then there was the vagus nerve stimulator my doctor recommended, Nurosym. Promise I’m not on commission, just passing along what I learned: that it’s the only one that’s been clinically tested and proven to help with anxiety, sleep quality, stress management, heart rate variability, cognitive function, fatigue and digestive health.

I try to use it daily for 60 minutes, and I've done some very unscientific before-and-after tests at home - counting backwards from 50 to zero to see how many times my concentration lapses. The results were enough to convince me it actually does improve concentration.

I’ll take a selfie right now of me using my vagus nerve stimulator while I write.

The Power of Connection

Social connection is fundamentally wired into our biology as a survival mechanism. Dr. Matthew Lieberman, a leading social neuroscience researcher at UCLA and author of Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect, explains that our brains treat social pain (like rejection or loneliness) the same way they process physical pain.

His research shows that meaningful social interactions reduce cortisol levels, boost immune function and activate the brain’s reward centres in the same way food and shelter do. It’s not about being an extrovert or having hundreds of friends. It’s about having genuine connections where you feel seen and understood. The data is clear: people with strong social ties have a 50% increased likelihood of good mental health compared to those with weak social connections.

Top Five Natural Therapy Game-Changers

After everything I’ve tried and tested over decades and the research I’ve done, here are the top five needle-movers that actually reduce anxiety and depression:

1. Regular cardio exercise - aim for 30-60 minutes daily

2. Prioritise sleep - most adults need between seven and nine hours of quality sleep per night

3. Reduce or Eliminate Alcohol Intake - the optimal amount of alcohol for mental health is zero

4. Follow an anti-inflammatory diet - eat lots of seeds, nuts, berries, fatty fish, leafy greens, olive oil, turmeric, ginger and green tea

5. Spend time with people - seek genuine connection

For years, I’d been jogging every second day in the bush tracks near my home on Lake Maggiore with my dog Milo. Not because I’m any good at running – I’m genuinely terrible at it – but because 45-60 minutes of repetitive cardio was the only thing that kept my anxiety in check. I’d been a sporadic runner for decades, but after reading Charles Duhigg’s book The Power of Habit, I learnt that creating positive habits and doing them consistently has a positive flow-over effect on the rest of your life. So I pledged to run every second day, no excuses. It was a life-changing decision.

The day my doctor diagnosed me with ADHD, he looked up from his notes and said “Your exercise routine of habitual running is already half of what I would advise for your ADHD.” I already knew jogging was helping regulate serotonin in my brain, which was working wonders on my anxiety, but I didn’t know it was simultaneously treating my ADHD!

The research on cardio exercise for ADHD is compelling. A comprehensive review in Sports Medicine found that aerobic exercise increases BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor), basically a growth protein for brain cells that runs lower in people with ADHD. Even moderate cardio exercise boosts dopamine and norepinephrine levels, the neurotransmitters that ADHD medications target (source).

But it’s not just the running that keeps me functional – it’s also the breathing, circulating oxygen to the brain and body. Somewhere along those trails, I developed a rhythmic breathing pattern that’s become second nature. Basically, I breathe in strongly and deeply for about 4 strides, then slowly release over about 6-8 strides. The numbers are not important, it’s the principle: short inhale and longest possible exhale.

What’s actually happening is pretty remarkable. This deep breathing floods your prefrontal cortex – your brain’s command centre for focus and emotional regulation – with oxygen-rich blood. When your brain cells are properly fuelled, they communicate more efficiently. The extended exhale also activates your parasympathetic nervous system, your body’s built-in chill-out mechanism (source).

There’s one more piece that makes all the difference: I always run in nature (wherever possible). I’m deliberately breathing in all those healing chemicals that nature releases, along with oxygen that hasn’t been recycled through car exhausts.

Research shows that trees release phytoncides – plant essential oils – that we absorb through breathing. These compounds actually strengthen our immune, hormonal and nervous systems (source).

When you combine exercise, breathing and nature, you’re essentially giving your ADHD brain a triple dose of exactly what it needs.

Which brings me to a wonderful forest experience I had recently. I convinced two girlfriends that driving two hours to meet a Master Forest Bathing instructor (yes, this is actually his title on his business card) with a group of others in the Oasi Zegna nature preserve in Italy was a good idea.

What exactly is forest bathing? It’s a Japanese practice called shinrin yoku, which basically involves slowing down and getting quiet amongst the trees. You’re not actually bathing, you’re just using your senses to absorb nature around you whilst breathing deeply. There’s nothing costly required, just you and some trees willing to put up with you hugging them.

We spent the day wrapping our arms around massive tree trunks, lying flat on the forest floor gazing up at the swaying canopy, sniffing the air until we could smell the moss and bark.

Near the end of the day, our instructor asked us to close our eyes, stick out our tongues and slowly turn in circles to ‘taste the forest air.’ I did actually taste it but couldn’t help peeking at the end, pretending my eyes were closed while squinting (the way everyone peeks in Marco Polo, the swimming pool tag game). Through my eyelashes, I caught one of my girlfriends rotating slowly with her tongue sticking out as far as she could get it, utterly committed to tasting the forest. I burst into giggles like a little girl.

But seriously, something shifted that day. Beyond the joy of laughing with close friends in the middle of spectacular scenery, that sensory connection with the forest genuinely recalibrated something in my brain. I slept that night like I hadn’t in months and woke up regenerated.

The science backs up what I felt. A comprehensive Stanford University study found that 90-minute nature walks reduce activity in the brain’s subgenual prefrontal cortex – the area that lights up during anxious thoughts. Researchers discovered that this time in nature lowers cortisol levels by an average of 16% and reduces sympathetic nervous system activity (our fight-or-flight response) by 55% (source).

On the day my ADHD doctor diagnosed me, he asked what my daily non-pharmaceutical routine for managing mental health was (something no doctor had ever asked until then). When I told him about my jogging, he suggested I consider cold bathing on my non-running days and told me about Wim Hof.

I fell down the research rabbit hole, reading Wim Hof’s book The Wim Hof Method and listening to podcasts including the American neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, who presents the science showing that cold exposure increases dopamine by 250% for several hours. This is higher and more sustained than coffee, without the crash. The research shows the optimal temperature of the water is between 10-15°C, and you only need at least 2-4 minutes to trigger the response (source).

I also learnt about the research into saunas and the powerful impact they have on ADHD, anxiety and depression. I started at a local fitness centre, alternating between 10-15 minutes in an authentic Finnish sauna at 90°C and 12 minutes in a cold bath at 12°C. Then I got my husband hooked, and eventually we bought a cold bath for our home, permanently chilled at a toasty 13°C. I know it’s not for everyone, and you have to be careful to follow the safety precautions around cold bathing – but if it is for you, it’s free therapy that works.

I can’t write about natural ADHD therapies without addressing meditation. The research is overwhelming. A landmark study in the Journal of Attention Disorders found that just 8 weeks of mindfulness training significantly reduces ADHD symptoms in adults, improving attention and emotional regulation (source).

In my early twenties, mid-panic-attack era, I took a transcendental meditation course in Sydney and actually stuck with it – 20 minutes, twice daily, for over a year. Was I good at it? Absolutely not. My active brain treated those 20 minutes like the only chance it had to think of everything I hadn’t had time to do yet.

Then I recently read Australian author Sarah Wilson’s book First, We Make the Beast Beautiful, and it reframed meditation. Wilson admits she’s “crap at meditation” too, but argues that being bad at it might actually be the point. It’s not about achieving zen master status, she says – it’s about repeatedly bringing your scattered attention back to the mantra. So, she argues, the more active your brain is, the more you have to train it to come back. Her maxim ‘Just meditate!’ is wise.

This is probably why I’ve become passionate about Freediving, basically holding your breath and diving underwater without any breathing equipment. It’s meditation for people like me who can’t sit still, because you have to calm your mind completely whilst your body is doing something active. I love the silence you find in deep water - the way it forces your mind to slow right down (Note: you should absolutely not try free diving on your own. I did the PADI Freediving course to get started as it explains the necessary safety precautions).

Research shows Free diving activates the parasympathetic nervous system even more effectively than traditional meditation, whilst simultaneously improving CO2 tolerance – which directly impacts anxiety responses (source).

So after years of wading through research and experimenting, I’ve learnt you can treat ADHD effectively with natural therapies. There’s no magic solution – it’s about finding what works for you. For me, it’s running that floods the brain with the right chemicals, breathing that oxygenates scattered thoughts, forest air that recalibrates the nervous system and cold water that shocks me into the present.

These aren’t just wellness trends. They’re evidence-based treatments that work on the same neurological pathways as pharmaceuticals, without the side effects some of us can’t tolerate. Your ADHD brain might need something different than mine, but if pharmaceuticals aren’t working or you want to supplement them, there’s solid science behind sweating, breathing, tree-hugging and freezing your butt off in cold water. And once you’ve got decent running shoes and access to cold water, this medicine is free.

(Note: I share based on my lived experience. Your journey is unique – so please seek expert guidance to find what’s right for you).

In that cramped dispensary, I caught a few heads swivelling my way. Mental health still carries a stigma here in Italy – it makes people whisper. As an Aussie who’s been here 23 years (Italian by marriage, Australian by refusal to change), I grew up in a family that learned to discuss each other’s mental health openly. The first time I chatted with the team at my software company about mental health at work, one of our Sicilian team members messaged me privately afterwards. She’d been dealing with anxiety for years but never realised mental health was something you could actually talk about.

Living with ADHD can feel like having a mind that’s always racing – a whirlwind of thoughts and ideas. Vibrant and creative, yes, but sometimes overwhelming and exhausting. Ritalin works by boosting dopamine and norepinephrine levels in the brain through blocking their reuptake. These chemical messengers play a key role in regulating attention and behavior (source).

I’d read that taking this medication can be like putting on glasses for the first time – suddenly, everything comes into sharper focus. It supposedly doesn’t change your personality or dampen creativity. Instead, it’s said to help create mental clarity, allowing people to harness their abilities more effectively. Doctors will tell you it’s not a cure-all, but Ritalin offers many ADHDers the chance for better focus and self-regulation.

I have friends whose kids’ lives have been transformed by Ritalin.

In my home office I stared out at the slice of Lake Maggiore and swallowed my first Ritalin pill with a gulp of cold water. Then I waited.

Nothing.

Thirty minutes later, my Zoom reminder chimed. Julia, a collaborator, appeared in the grid of rectangles on screen. As I talked, my thoughts clicked into place like puzzle pieces slotting seamlessly together. My sentences flowed without the usual distractions and layers of thoughts cluttering my mind.

“If this is the Ritalin,” I thought, “my work could transform.”

But after the meeting, when I stood to go to the bathroom, I noticed a buzzing in my head and my heart beating with a quickened rhythm. It felt like mild symptoms of my old friend, anxiety. Was this just my body adjusting to the new medication? Or was this stimulant simply too stimulating for someone with my anxiety history?

I fixed my gaze on the little purple rubber duck beneath my monitor. It looked jittery, as if it too had bad nerves. I pressed back into my office chair, wondering if I was about to unleash that old beast anxiety again. My mind started racing.

“What if the Ritalin triggers my anxiety and I get sick again? Then I’ll have to stop working and...”

After a few hours, the racing mind wore off and I managed to get on with work.

The next morning brought renewed hope – maybe my body and mind just needed time to adjust. For five mornings, I repeated the ritual: water, pill, Zoom meetings, buzzing head. I even tried halving the dose as Dr. Dominic had suggested. Always the same result.

By day six, I cracked. I’d had enough.

I rang Dr. Dominic to report in and ask what was next on his list: Concerta.

I already knew Ritalin and Concerta share the same active ingredient, but Dr. Dominic seemed to think the slow-release formula – designed for eight hours instead of Ritalin’s four (source) – might make all the difference.

My Concerta experience was equally disappointing. The buzzing head and racing mind returned, and I felt disconnected from my normal world. I ditched the pills. Anxiety was a price I refused to pay for a clearer mind.

At my next appointment, Dr. Dominic offered Atomoxetine, a non-stimulant known in some countries as Strattera. Its mechanism felt gentler – no jolts to the central nervous system.

Atomoxetine works by increasing norepinephrine levels in the brain, a neurotransmitter crucial for attention and impulse control. Unlike the immediate kick of stimulants like Ritalin, Atomoxetine builds up gradually over weeks (source).

Many people describe a gradual improvement in concentration and thought organisation, like slowly tuning in a fuzzy radio signal. It doesn’t provide that energy “kick” of stimulants, but offers a subtle, steady enhancement of focus and emotional regulation. For some, this means fewer mood swings and better task persistence.

After two months on Atomoxetine, I was experiencing positive effects without anxiety symptoms. But I did notice my plumbing system had become somewhat... blocked. My visits to the throne had become irregular. Still, I thought, at least my focus was better.

At some point in the following weeks, I started favouring working on the bed instead of sitting at my desk. My energy drained. I put it down to a low period, maybe a lingering infection.

One afternoon, my husband called about something trivial. Suddenly, I cracked with irrational fury. After the anger, I broke down and confessed the dark thoughts that had settled around me like storm clouds. He listened, then asked what medication I’d been taking. I mentioned Atomoxetine but insisted it wasn’t to blame.

That evening, he called back, speaking gently, like I was a fragile doll. “Trina, I found research suggesting Atomoxetine can blunt the effects of your antidepressant Zoloft. There’s a gut-brain connection. Please look into its effects on serotonin and consider stopping immediately.”

I did, reading about serotonin and intestinal motility. Suddenly, everything clicked. My mind had sharpened, but at the cost of my mental equilibrium.

On my morning run the next day, clarity. No ADHD pill had fine-tuned my concentration without unbalancing another part of me. It was time to accept that pharmaceuticals weren’t going to improve my ADHD symptoms. Sometimes, you have to weigh the lesser of two evils and accept your limitations.

As I closed this chapter on my brief pharmaceutical journey, I couldn’t help thinking of my friends whose lives – and whose kids’ lives – had been transformed by Ritalin, Concerta, and Atomoxetine.

At least now I knew these drugs weren’t for me.

This realisation reaffirmed my determination to improve my ADHD symptoms through natural therapies. I knew my regular jogging and the Zoloft I’d been taking for years were already helping my ADHD. I was about to discover there were even more powerful non-pharmaceutical ways to improve my concentration and focus.

(Important note: I share based on what my doctors prescribed specifically for me, taking into account my medical history and symptoms. Your body and brain are unique - so please work with your medical expert to find what is best for you).

This wasn’t just a regular four-year-old tantrum. I have a vivid memory of the violent onset of anxiety’s trademarks - pounding heart, racing thoughts, nausea. Anyone who’s suffered a panic attack remembers their first.

Over the years that followed, my panic worsened to the point where Mum took me to a child psychologist when I was about twelve. His name was Dr. Loni (I called him Dr. Looney). Back then most doctors, Dr. Looney included, didn’t have the knowledge to diagnose anxiety disorders. I remember being intimidated by his dark rooms and intense stares while I drew pictures of how I felt. I was so uncomfortable after a few sessions that I never wanted to go back - which, ironically, distracted me from my anxiety - at least for a while.

It wasn’t until my late twenties that I received a proper diagnosis of an anxiety disorder. By then, my untreated condition had become chronic. It’s a story I’ll tell in a future blog about anxiety and depression, but basically the turning point came when I turned thirty and three leading anxiety specialists diagnosed me with a chronic anxiety disorder with a strong genetic link. They prescribed a high dose of the powerful SSRI antidepressant Zoloft and recommended I take it for the foreseeable future

(Important note: I share based on what my doctors prescribed specifically for me, taking into account my medical history and symptoms. Your body and brain are unique - so please work with your medical expert to find what is right for you).

Why were antidepressants prescribed for my anxiety? Anxiety and depression are neurological siblings sharing brain chemistry and responding to the same treatments. For me, anxiety usually strikes first with its classic symptoms - racing thoughts, physical tension, “what-if” scenarios - while depression follows as the exhausted, defeated hangover after the battle. Among the typical traits of depression are low mood, loss of interest in things one previously enjoyed, and fatigue. This explains why my doctor prescribed Zoloft, an antidepressant, for my anxiety. By regulating serotonin levels, it effectively manages both conditions (source).

The impact of Zoloft was transformative for me. Accepting that I needed long-term medication and establishing a consistent routine - taking it every day at the same time - restored my equilibrium and allowed me to move forward with my life. Equally powerful to my recovery and ongoing management were the diet and lifestyle changes I made: eating a healthy, balanced diet; giving up alcohol and coffee; prioritising sleep; and incorporating cardio exercise into my daily routine.

I’ll dive deeper into how I’ve successfully learned to manage my anxiety and depression in a future post. For now, I want to talk about the tight-knit relationship between ADHD and anxiety.

As a teen, I’d read about ADHD and thought, “That sounds like me.” When I mentioned it to Mum, she pointed out that I’d done well at school and had healthy relationships, so why bother? I shelved the thought for decades while I cycled through different careers and boyfriends (both ADHD traits, looking back). In my early thirties, I fell in love with my Italian husband, ending my “swivel-head” phase (Dad’s affectionate nickname for me during my boyfriend-swapping years). We married, had kids, and they became my focus. My beloved husband jokes that my life priority list goes: our boys, Milo our chocolate Labrador, then him. Personally, I think he forgot to include my celebrity crush on Chris Martin from Coldplay, but whatever!

Adults who've lived with ADHD their whole lives usually figure out their own coping strategies along the way. For decades, I’d unconsciously built a scaffolding of workarounds - setting reminder alarms on my phone, hanging my keys on the same hook when I walk in the door and making a list for everything. Founding and running my own software company motivated me to finally get assessed in my forties. The results confirmed what I'd suspected all along: I had ADHD. (see my diagnosis blog).

After my diagnosis, I couldn’t help wondering if my undiagnosed ADHD had been fuelling my anxiety all along. Science confirms this relationship - doctors call them “comorbidities,” conditions that dance together like awkward partners. Research backs this up: a 2022 study published in Psychiatry Research found that over half of adults with ADHD have at least one anxiety disorder (source). Conversely, between 47% and 53% of adults with anxiety disorders meet ADHD criteria (source).

In my case, sometimes a classic ADHD trait directly triggers anxiety - like impulsively acting without thinking. Other times my anxiety is driven by reliving situations where I was anxious in the past such as long nights when I couldn’t sleep. A trigger such as this leads to worry snowballing that goes something like : “What if I can’t sleep tonight, then I’ll feel anxious tomorrow and that will make me sick again and then I won’t be able to cope with work and being a mum and…”.

As mentioned earlier, taking the antidepressant Zoloft long-term and regularly jogging helped me manage the debilitating symptoms of my anxiety. When my ADHD diagnosis came through, I made an appointment with my anxiety specialist, eager to discuss combining medications.

“So you want to add ADHD medication to your Zoloft?” she asked, her brow furrowing.

When I nodded, she removed her glasses and leaned in. “The jogging you do regularly and the Zoloft you’ve taken for years, they’re already treating your ADHD symptoms, and you’re doing so well. Why would you want to change anything? Most ADHD medications are stimulants,” she explained, her voice softening. “With your anxiety history …” She shook her head, leaving the sentence unfinished. Her message was clear.

But I hadn’t suffered from debilitating anxiety for almost two decades, and the drive to better myself proved too powerful to ignore. Despite my doctor’s caution, I couldn’t shake the determination to address my ADHD symptoms. While I absolutely refused to risk sliding back into the grip of anxiety, I still wanted to explore if there might be a medication that could work alongside Zoloft to improve my focus and attention.

What followed was an unexpected odyssey through the pharmaceutical landscape - three different ADHD medications, each with its own constellation of side effects - before I learned how to really have a long lasting effect on improving my ADHD symptoms.

How could I both shine academically and be utterly hopeless at remembering where I left my phone? Man, in recent years, I’ve even frantically searched my handbag for my mobile while talking on it - and not just once!

Two years ago, I found myself seated in Dr. Dominic’s modern slightly clinical studio. When he looked up from his notes and said, “You have ADHD,” I wasn’t surprised. In the back of my mind, I’d known for years. Still, hearing it from a doctor made it more real and more of a priority to address. I didn’t know then how much being diagnosed with ADHD would transform my mental health.

Dr. Dominic explained that ADHD, or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, is caused by an imbalance of neurotransmitters in the brain - dopamine and norepinephrine. These chemicals play a crucial role in attention, focus and impulse control. When they’re out of balance, it can lead to symptoms like struggling to concentrate, hyperfocus, restlessness, or making hasty decisions. For some, concentration is the primary challenge. For others, it’s hyperactivity and impulsivity. Many, such as me, experience a mix of traits (source).

I’d already been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder in my late 20s and had worked diligently for years to manage and improve those symptoms (I’ll share more about that journey in my next article). It wasn’t until I became an entrepreneur in my 40s in Italy, started my own company, and began juggling motherhood with work stress that I wanted to know more about my ADHD.

My entrepreneurship journey began when our youngest son was starting school. I created a digital vocabulary learning game for him, entered it into a business plan competition, and won seed funding and an invitation to an accelerator program. This led to the birth of my educational app software company in Italy. At the time, I had no idea that what I’d become was an “entrepreneur.” I just had a gut feeling that I was doing what I was meant to do in life.

Five years after founding my company, I joined the Italian chapter of Entrepreneurs Organization (EO). I was surprised to learn that in my EO forum of eight members, three had ADHD. Moreover, the ADHDers were among the most successful members of the group. Was this mere coincidence? Or did people with ADHD actually possess traits that made them better entrepreneurs?

While there are several types of ADHD that manifest different symptoms, some traits are common. Research shows a direct link between entrepreneurship and people with common ADHD traits such as high energy, thinking outside the box, and readiness to take risks (source). These qualities, often considered challenges for children with ADHD at school, are actually assets for ADHD entrepreneurs. Even daydreaming has helped me over the years to think of off-beat ideas that have led to creative solutions. The ability of ADHDers to hyperfocus when deeply engaged is also a huge advantage.

Even so, my ADHD symptoms became a burden while I was working and juggling motherhood. The embarrassment caused by some ADHD traits at work made me want to seek diagnosis and support. I became self-conscious of my lapses in concentration. During one important meeting with our U.S. partners, my mind wandered to something other than what we were talking about. Suddenly, everyone agreed “this” was the right decision. A stab of anxiety flushed my cheeks red as I asked, “Sorry, could you please repeat which decision “this” is?” Afterward, I replayed the scene on loop in my mind, scolding myself for missing the main event, not feeling at all like a summa cum laude graduate.

I also began to recognise that my young boys weren’t developing healthy emotional self-regulation, with their frequent temper outbursts and shouting. Even our lovely neighbours said politely over the fence one day that they hadn’t heard our boys shouting at each other lately. We’d just returned from a month in Australia. I realised my stress and occasional lack of anger management wasn’t providing my boys with a positive role model. I wanted this to change before these patterns in my children became permanent.

And I developed an unhealthy fear that I wasn’t as intelligent as my grades suggested. In fact, I secretly worried that I might be a scemo (Italian colloquial for an idiot). I remember looking at everyone at their workstations in the company’s office one day, and thinking, ‘I can’t be the CEO of this company.’ It wasn’t just ordinary imposter syndrome. I’d just cut the company’s new replacement Visa card in half instead of the expired one sitting next to it.

Back to the day of my diagnosis, seated on the snug black leather couch in Dr. Dominic’s studio (surprised I lost track of what I was writing about?) when he explained the causes of ADHD and outlined both natural and pharmaceutical approaches to managing symptoms.

Regarding natural therapies, he explained that research showed cardio exercise helps balance neurotransmitters. ‘Aha!’ I thought to myself - I’d been jogging for years to manage stress, never realising I was self-prescribing therapy for my ADHD symptoms.

“Have you ever tried cold bathing?” Dr. Dominic asked.

“I usually turn the shower to cold for the last 20 seconds. Does that count?” I replied.

“You’re going to need more than 20 seconds to boost neurotransmitters. Try immersing yourself in cold water for roughly the same number of minutes as the water temperature.” He then introduced me to the Wim Hof method and promised to send a podcast about recent research showing cold water exposure is a powerful stimulant for dopamine and adrenaline production.

On the pharmaceutical front, Dr. Dominic presented three alternatives best suited for my type of ADHD (Important note: I share based on what my doctors prescribed for me, taking into account my medical history and symptoms. Your body and brain are unique - so please work with your medical expert to find what is best for you).

1. Ritalin (his preference): A fast-acting stimulant that quickly increases focus and alertness, working over a 4-hour period.

2. Concerta: Containing the same active ingredient as Ritalin but in a slow-release formulation designed to provide steady symptom control throughout the day.

3. Atomoxetine: A non-stimulant medication that increases norepinephrine levels in the brain, improving attention without the jittery side effects associated with stimulants.

I left Dr. Dominic’s office that day with a prescription for Ritalin tucked into my notes and a warm feeling of genuine hope for self-improvement. I wondered if this medication would spare me some embarrassment and help me feel more like a summa cum laude Master’s graduate than a scemo.

Subscribe now