Author: Jessica Drake

  • OCD is often misunderstood.

    It is not simply about being tidy or organised. In clinical practice, OCD more commonly involves: • Intrusive thoughts that feel distressing, unacceptable or urgent • Anxiety that spikes quickly and demands resolution • Compulsions – mental or physical – aimed at reducing uncertainty • Reassurance seeking, rumination, checking or…

  • Hamnet film review

    The monster behind the curtain is death, and she’s coming for us all. It is who we spend our lives with along the way that softens the journey to the great beyond. I’m sitting there on the plush seats in the Everyman cinema, a ball of anxiety in my stomach.…

  • What a tragic joke life is

    Please see my Substack (and please give me a follow) for the pictures and links. I haven’t written for a while, because I’ve been working on my novel, some of which I will put on here in due course (like a more grown up version of a celeb serialising their…

  • Perfectionism – The Dick Turpin of mental health

    I was lucky enough to go down to Cornwall for half term. It’s trite, but Gillan Cove really is my spiritual home (here are some pictures). Like Ibiza, another place I have lived and loved. Both places appear in the novel I am writing, unless I split the books in…

  • God, Ozempic, Chat GPT – this human needs a handrail

    If God had a name what would it be?And would you call it to his face?If you were faced with Him in all His gloryWhat would you ask if you had just one question? I’d ask him why I was born in an age of too much choice, that’s for…

  • Will Chat GPT feel my feelings for me?

    I have been absent from here for nearly four months. It wasn’t meant to be that long. Actually it was either going to be a monthly contribution from me, or I’d disappear into oblivion. As the Christmas break became less of an excuse, I thought it may be the latter,…

  • The truth is rarely pure and never simple

    This is my quote of the month, and it made a fitting title. It is of course from The Importance of being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. I happened to study this text for English A Level, and it is genius. Another great Irishman, my accountant, says there are always ‘at least five sides to every…

  • We drown ourselves in our own puddles

    “No piece of information is superior to any other. Power lies in having them all on file and then finding the connections. There are always connections; you have only to want to find them.”  Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum This is the best quote I heard in September, and I am…

  • Dear Raymond, what do we talk about when we talk about love?

    Here’ s a little essay I wrote… but you might not want to sing it note for note… DON’T WORRY, BE HAPPY Please go to my Substack here to find the same article with all the links. *** I am Jess, a psychotherapist and an author, specialising in addiction and…

  • Busyness is laziness that leads to sickness

    Yes you read it right. It’s so very easy to be busy if you’re a dopamine addict like me. The shorter, sharper and faster the hit, the better. It is why in the noughties I enjoyed taking ecstasy more than anything else (sorry Mum and Dad). Way more than alcohol,…