What perception is projection asks us to consider is whether the meaning we are attaching to that behaviour belongs entirely to the other person, or whether some of it belongs to us. One of the reasons I find this topic so fascinating is that the human brain can only recognise behaviour it already understands.

I have been having an absolute field day lately with language and its impact on our thinking. I do, after all, educate and certify people in Neuro-Linguistic Programming. And my clients and graduates will tell you with certainty that it's far from the "let's all just think positive words and thoughts, and manifest the world" kind of narrative.

Certainty. It's an interesting concept. It's been sitting heavily on my mind because of a conversation I had with a client going through a huge career transition. Naturally, the career change has brought up a massive wave of uncertainty for them.

If you feel like the state of the world is living inside your head, it is not a personal failing, it is a pattern called the Drama Cycle. Emotionally charged information is designed to pull you into one of three roles: victim, persecutor, or saviour.

Feeling unlike yourself: anxious, flat, or emotionally unrecognisable, is a normal response to collective uncertainty. Your emotions are not the problem. Fear, sadness, and anger are survival signals designed to guide you. When you learn to direct them instead of suppress them, they become tools for clarity and action.

This week, I’m exploring identity in a way that moves beyond roles, labels, and what we do each day. In this piece, I share why identity isn’t something fixed, but something we practise daily, often without even realising it. I unpack how living on autopilot can quietly disconnect us from ourselves, and how shifting our focus to how we want to feel allows us to take back ownership of who we are becoming.

Powerless - is the feeling that you are stuck, that there is no way forward, that what is happening around you has more control than what is happening within you. At its most intense, it can feel like despair, helplessness, even a quiet sense of giving up.

There is something deeply personal about the emotion of hurt. It lingers a little longer. It feels heavier, and often, we don't know what to do with it. We tell ourselves to move on. To let it go. To not be so sensitive, yet hurt exists for a reason. Its higher purpose is self-respect.

Most of us were taught to avoid embarrassment. Something awkward. Something we should push away as quickly as possible, yet embarrassment has a purpose. At its core, embarrassment is a social emotion. It developed to help us stay connected to the tribe. Long before modern life, belonging to the group meant safety and survival. Embarrassment helps us pause and check in with our behaviour within the social world around us.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been writing about what I call our survival emotions. We’ve explored anger, sadness and fear; these emotions are designed to protect us, alert us and help us navigate the world around us. They are powerful, primal and deeply human. Now we move into the next layer. The social emotions. This is where it gets really interesting, because these emotions are not so much about life or death. They are not about whether the berry is poisonous or whether t