brain

Weepy, hypersensitive, prone to lengthy periods of unbroken moping after rejection—and those are just my good qualities. After three decades of being a pain in my own butt, I’ve pretty much given up hope on altering my emotional temperament.

A new study in Biological Psychiatry found that even in healthy people, stressful events can make the parts of the brain that are responsible for regulating your emotions, self-control and metabolism shrink.

How to overcome one’s fears, anxieties and phobias? It’s a challenge that many of us give a lot of thought and attention to over the course of our lives and with varying degrees of success. One of the most effective treatments for fear and anxiety is called exposure therapy.

There are few things as satisfying as spending a weekend tucked up in bed reading a great novel — a story you can’t put down for fear of breaking the spell and losing the vital connection you feel to its suddenly living, breathing characters.

I spent the last month in Israel, where I was on a steady diet of beige foods: hummus, pita, tahini, falafel, and shawarma. It was delicious - and very filling - but I am happy to be back in Toronto for local fruit season.