The fear of using the bus or train is one of the most often cited examples of social anxiety on public transport – and it’s no surprise. It encapsulates a lot of the issues surrounding both the initial fear of being in public and also the spiralling fears which come from avoiding a certain situation….

In the Limelight: How to Live With Stagefright 22 August 2015 / Public Speaking / Kyle MacDonald It’s traditional to start blogs on performance anxiety by running out a list of famous names of people who suffered from stage fright. And, sure, the fact that Adele, Barbara Streisand, Andrea Bocelli, Kim Basinger, Rod Stewart, Donny…

This may seem like nonsense, but actually one of the best ways to cope with stress is to allow your self to feel a little bit of it, and to take on moderate and realistic challenges. In doing so we inoculate our body and our brain to stress. A lot of people who struggle with…

REPOSTED: Stop Watching the News by Kyle MacDonald on November 18, 2015 It seems a good week to re-visit this episode of the Confident Mind.  So if you missed it the first time around, enjoy… In this episode of “The Confident Mind,” I talk about how our mind is defined by what we pay attention to,…

Chasing the Scream: Interview with Johann Hari (Part I) by Kyle MacDonald on June 10, 2015 This week on the Confident Mind I talk with Johann Hari about his new book “Chasing the Scream: The First and last Days of the War on Drugs”.   Johann is a  British journalist who has written for many of…

Anxiety Is Not A Disease by Kyle MacDonald on September 30, 2015 In this weeks episode of The Confident Mind I talk about the limits and dangers in thinking about anxiety as a “brain disease”, some of the research that shows it clearly isn’t a disease, and what we understand about what actually causes anxiety….