Identity and Life Transitions
For the moments when life asks you to become someone different. Posts in this category explore midlife, the transition to parenthood, feeling behind, physical health challenges, and the sandwich generation - the life stages that quietly reorganise who you are.
The Gilded Cage: When the Relationship Looks Right But Feels Wrong
Some relationships look exactly right from the outside and feel deeply wrong from the inside. This post explores the particular trap of the status relationship, and the question nobody wants to ask out loud: do I get to stay in my life if I leave?
Dr Erin Reid
2 days ago3 min read
Turning Thirty: When Your Life Does Not Match the Expected Script
Thirty arrives with a set of expectations attached to it. This post explores what happens when your life at thirty does not match the script, and why that gap tends to feel more significant than it needs to.
Dr Erin Reid
Jul 134 min read
The Parenting Treadmill: On Keeping Up in the School Gate Stakes
The social world of parenting in certain circles can reproduce the in-groups and out-groups of adolescence with remarkable fidelity. This post explores what the parenting treadmill actually involves and how to step back from it.
Dr Erin Reid
Jun 294 min read
The Loneliness Epidemic: Why the Most Connected Generation Feels Most Alone
Loneliness is no longer primarily an experience of old age. This post explores the growing epidemic of loneliness across generations, why young people are now the loneliest of all, and what the shift toward virtual connection is costing us.
Dr Erin Reid
Jun 215 min read
Why Social Media Makes You Feel Worse About Your Own Life
Social media is actively designed to keep you scrolling and scrolling tends to make you feel worse about your own life. This post explores the psychology of social comparison online and what it does to mood and self-worth.
Dr Erin Reid
Jun 144 min read
Financial Anxiety: Where Does the Money Go?
Financial anxiety is not only about how much you earn. This post explores why outgoings can quietly come to match or exceed income regardless of salary, and what tends to lie beneath that pattern.
Dr Erin Reid
Jun 73 min read
The Work-Life (Re)Balancing Act: The Unintended Consequences of an Achievement Focus
The pursuit of professional success can quietly crowd out everything else. This post explores what happens when achievement becomes the primary focus of a life, and what tends to get left behind.
Dr Erin Reid
May 173 min read
Performing Success: Black Identity, Social Media, and the Exhaustion of Keeping Up
For many Black adults, social media has added a new layer to an already complex relationship with success and identity. This post explores what that pressure actually involves.
Dr Erin Reid
May 173 min read
Being Black in 2026: Racial Grief and the Globalisation of Hate
What does it mean to try to make a home in a country that is, at least in part, telling you that you do not belong? This post explores the psychological cost of living as a Black person in the current political climate.
Dr Erin Reid
May 105 min read
Twice as Hard: What Racial Stress Does to the Body and Mind Over Time
The instruction to work twice as hard is passed down through generations for good reason. But the psychological and physical cost of living by it over time is rarely spoken about. This post explores what that cost actually involves.
Dr Erin Reid
Apr 263 min read
Trauma: What It Actually Is and Why It Stays
Trauma is widely misunderstood. This post explores what it actually involves psychologically, why it persists long after the event, and what therapeutic support can offer.
Dr Erin Reid
Mar 153 min read
Grief: What Bereavement Actually Involves and Why It Takes as Long as It Takes
Grief is one of the most significant experiences a person can go through, and one of the most poorly understood. This post explores what bereavement actually involves, and why it cannot be hurried.
Dr Erin Reid
Mar 83 min read
Infertility, Pregnancy Loss, and Birth Trauma: The Grief Nobody Prepares You For
Infertility, miscarriage, and birth trauma involve losses that are real and significant, and that are often inadequately acknowledged by the world around them. This post explores what that experience involves psychologically.
Dr Erin Reid
Feb 223 min read
Navigating Perimenopause and Menopause: How Therapy Can Help
Perimenopause and menopause involve more than physical symptoms. This post explores the psychological dimensions: identity, relationships, mood, and what therapy can offer during this transition.
Dr Erin Reid
Feb 163 min read
Why So Many Women Reach Adulthood Without an ADHD Diagnosis
Many women reach midlife before anyone considers ADHD as an explanation for what they have been experiencing. This post explores why late diagnosis is so common, and what the undiagnosed years tend to involve.
Dr Erin Reid
Jan 183 min read
When the Tables Turn: Becoming the Parent of Your Parent
There is a gradual shift that happens between adult children and their ageing parents that is rarely spoken about. This post explores the quiet grief, the role reversal, and what it asks of us psychologically.
Dr Erin Reid
Dec 21, 20254 min read
When Your Adult Child Knows a Language You Were Never Taught
Parenting a psychologically informed generation when your own upbringing was defined by pushing through is more complicated than it looks. This post explores the tensions on both sides honestly.
Dr Erin Reid
Dec 14, 20254 min read
'Failure' to Launch: Parenting Adult Children in 2026
Adult children in 2026 are facing a different world from the one their parents launched into. This post explores the psychological and practical dimensions of so called ‘failure to launch’ - including the role neurodiversity can play.
Dr Erin Reid
Dec 7, 20255 min read
Parenting Adult Children: When the Role Has to Change
The transition from parenting a child to having an adult-to-adult relationship with them is one of the least discussed challenges of midlife. This post explores what that shift requires and what gets in the way.
Dr Erin Reid
Nov 30, 20255 min read
Why I Do This Work - and Why I Know It From the Inside
Approaching my fifth decade with three degrees, and a journey that has taken me through the private sector, NHS psychology, the voluntary sector, and private practice - there are a number of things I have come to know from the inside.
Dr Erin Reid
Apr 6, 20255 min read
