Something is bothering you.

You can’t stop thinking about it. You feel so conflicted that your whole nervous system seems to be on high alert. Or perhaps something is bothering you, but you don’t even know exactly what the problem is.

You book a therapy session, ready to tackle it. You choose a therapist with good qualifications.

Then the disappointment arrives.

They make you complete a set of questionnaires. Then they ask about alcohol, medication, drugs, childhood, and many other things, but not a single question about the thing that is bothering you most. At the end, they give you a worksheet to complete. You leave feeling demoralised, lost, and dismissed.

Experiences like this are more common than they should be.

Method of Levels therapy (MOL) offers a different starting point. It helps you focus on the problem that is most alive in your mind right now, while also making space for what may sit underneath it.

No worksheets.

No homework.

No pressure to learn a set of techniques.

So what actually happens during a Method of Levels therapy session?

MOL therapy is driven by your attention. The itchy thought, the intrusive image, the conflicting ideas, the intense emotion. Whatever is currently bothering you, that is where you will start.

It sounds almost too simple. You come to therapy with a problem, and the therapist helps you explore that problem. But there is a lot more going on under the surface, which I will get to.

Every session of MOL therapy starts in a very similar way. The therapist will open with something like:

What is bothering you at the moment?

Or simply:

What would you like to talk about today?

Then your job is to start exploring the problem from whatever angle feels right. Images, thoughts, feelings, memories, half-formed ideas, it is all valid. If you don’t know what your problem is, that is okay too. Your therapist will help you find a starting point.

You do not need to arrive prepared with a detailed analysis. All you need is a vague sense of what is bothering you, and willingness to talk about it.

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What happens in MOL once you start talking?

After the opening question, the direction of the session is guided by your attention. Not your therapist’s agenda. Yours.

Our minds naturally jump between thoughts, feelings, and ideas. That is fine. The therapist is trained to understand how human awareness works, what role attention plays in psychological difficulty, and how to help the process of change.

The underlying theory behind MOL is solid, with roots going back to the 1960s, and the clinical evidence has been building steadily since.I will not go into all of it here, but I promise it’s not just a collection of good intentions.

As you explore the problem, your therapist will be with you. Listening, staying curious, asking questions. Every question is designed to help you understand your problem better and to gently move things forward.

They will not interrupt you to share their opinion.

They will not offer advice or express deep sympathy for your story.

Those things can feel supportive in the moment, but they can also pull you out of the flow. When you are in the middle of exploring something important, the last thing you need is someone redirecting you.

Sometimes the therapist will simply nod. Sometimes they will ask a small question to help you go further. But sometimes they will interrupt you mid-sentence. Not to stop your flow, but to catch something important before it disappears.

What is your MOL therapist actually doing?

On the surface it can look like a very simple job. Sit, listen, ask the occasional question. But internally, the therapist is doing something quite specific.

While staying curious about the problem, they are watching for your background thoughts.

What does that mean?

As you talk, your mind is doing two things at once. There is the story you are telling out loud, and then there is a background layer of other thoughts, images, and feelings. These background thoughts rarely make it into the conversation. They might be things you feel embarrassed about, things that are painful, or things you have not quite put into words yet.

In everyday life, we tend to keep these hidden. If a friend asks you why you smiled while talking about something serious, most of the time you would brush it off or change the subject.

But in MOL, these are exactly the thoughts worth exploring.

The therapist is watching your body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, and any shifts in how you speak. They are not analysing you. They are simply paying close attention, ready to catch the moments when a background thought surfaces.

Then they ask about it. Directly.

“What made you pause just then?”

“What crossed your mind when you corrected yourself?”

“What made you apologise just now?”

These questions might feel random at first. But there is nothing random about why they are asked. They help you explore your problem from angles you would never have reached on your own.

Has a therapist ever asked you something that completely shifted how you saw your own problem? I’d love to hear about it. Leave a comment!

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Why is it called Method of Levels?

When you first start talking, you are at the surface of the problem. But as the session develops, you move between different levels of understanding. Some questions will take you deeper, towards the bigger picture, your long-term goals, your values, and what kind of person you want to be. Other questions will bring you closer to the surface, towards the raw sensations, fleeting images, emotions in the body.

The therapist is helping you move through these levels, keeping your awareness on the areas most likely to create real change.

How does change actually happen?

This is the question I get asked most often. And it is a reasonable question.

Can simply talking be enough to resolve something that has been bothering you for years?

Yes.

And here is why.

If self-help techniques were the answer, you would probably have found something useful already. Books, podcasts, YouTube, ChatGPT, or advice from friends. You have likely tried some of it. Answers to any practical questions are available within a few clicks. What happens in MOL is different.

The research behind MOL is based on a theory called Perceptual Control Theory (PCT).

I know it sounds scary, but stay with me.

In simple terms, it suggests that as humans we are constantly trying to control what we perceive - not the world itself, but our perception of it.

Sometimes consciously, and sometimes automatically. This happens at many different levels. For example we sweat to cool down when feeling too hot, we adjust body posture when we’re in pain, we speak differently when our social image is at risk, we leave jobs when we realise they are getting in the way of our values.

When something looks different to how we want it to be, we try to change it. Simple as that.

Where it gets more interesting is when those attempts at making a change stop working. The gap between how things are and how we want them to be stays open, and that is when emotions and sensations tend to intensify.

Psychological distress often arises when we are stuck in a conflict between two important goals or values that feel incompatible.

Wanting to be successful at work but also wanting to be present for your family.

Wanting to be honest but not wanting to hurt someone you love.

These conflicts, when they stay unresolved, tend to generate the kind of persistent, exhausting symptoms that bring people to therapy in the first place.

The MOL therapist is helping you bring those conflicts into awareness and explore them at a deeper level. Not to solve them for you, but to help your mind find its own way through.

The process of change, according to the science, is not linear. It is often unpredictable. You have probably experienced this yourself. You spend weeks cringing over something embarrassing you said. Then one day you realise you have completely moved on. You don’t know exactly when it happened. Something shifted, and the problem just stopped bothering you.

That shift in perception is what MOL is aiming for.

When can you expect to feel better?

Sometimes change happens quite quickly within the session itself. You reach a new perspective and the session ends on that thought. You leave needing some time to sit with it.

Other times, not much seems to happen during the session. But then you turn up for your next appointment and something has shifted. Your perspective is different. The problem looks smaller, or less tangled. This is because a lot of the change happens in the background, between sessions, as your mind continues to process and reorganise.

The problem does not get resolved because your therapist figures out what is wrong with you. It tends to resolve in a much more natural way.

You reach a conclusion yourself. Your priorities quietly update.

Gradually, things feel more in control.

How many sessions of MOL therapy do you need?

It is common to feel better just after one session. Sometimes you need a few sessions. In some cases, a long-term therapy with additional time between the sessions for life events or changes is what you need.

But don’t worry. You are never trapped into a rigid therapy programme.

In MOL, you are in control of the frequency and duration of your therapy. There is no set number of sessions. You decide when to come back and when to stop. Some people attend weekly. Others come once a month. Some take a break and return when they need to.

This is not just a nice feature of MOL. It is part of the theory. Research shows that giving people control over the process of therapy produces better results.

A final thought

If your previous experiences of therapy have left you feeling like a passive recipient of someone else’s plan for your mental health, MOL might feel very refreshing.

You are in the driving seat.

The therapist is there to help you explore, not to direct you somewhere they have already decided you need to go.

The problems that bring people to therapy are always unique. Your therapist doesn't know the full complexity of what matters to you, and they are not pretending to. But they do know how to help you find it yourself.

That, in a nutshell, is Method of Levels.

Whether you’re a client planning to attend an MOL therapy session soon, or you’re a therapist hoping to learn about it, I would love to hear from you.

If you have questions about MOL or want to share your own experience, share them in the comments below.

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A couple of years ago my neighbour was turning 80. I knocked on his door, ready to say happy birthday over the doorstep.

Before I could blink, I was already sat on his sofa with a glass of red wine in my hand, my girlfriend by my side, and my neighbour and his wife smiling from the sofa opposite.

The room had that old-school, slightly simplistic décor that somehow made the whole thing feel even better. Usually when he offers me wine, I say no. I’m often on my way to work, about to drive, or planning a gym session. But this time was different. I was ready to enjoy myself.

He lifted the bottle, smiled, and said, “I have been drinking wine for over 60 years, and this one is my favourite.”

I looked at his wife. She smiled too and said, “He loves his jammy red.”

Watching the two of them in their 80s, full of energy and warmth, I did have the thought: maybe wine really has done something for them.

That is exactly why headlines about wine being healthy are so attractive. Many people love it. And those who do often live quite good lives.

The new study from Italy sounds promising at first. Large sample size. Over 22,000 participants. Thirty-six blood biomarkers. Multiple authors. A detailed analysis.

And then the exciting bit, the conclusions: men drinking a moderate amount of wine appeared “biologically younger” than abstainers. If you take their model literally, the magic number was around 172 mL of wine per day, which is approximately a standard medium glass of wine. That meant the difference of 0.34 to 0.39 years, depending on the analysis. In other words, about 4 to 5 months younger on paper, or, if we’re being a bit silly with the maths, around 0.7% younger.

If you enjoy wine, it sounds like a double win. You can drink it every day and call it healthy. You can easily imagine people treating that as a little longevity hack. One avocado a day, one apple a day, and one glass of wine to keep yourself 0.7% younger on paper.

Not so fast.

Before you start treating your wine rack like a health intervention, let’s take a step back.

Before trusting the headline, it’s worth asking a few boring but important questions. Does the study really support the conclusion people are taking from it? How much can it actually tell us? Are there any obvious reasons to be cautious about the conclusion?

One obvious question is whether there is any conflict of interest. On that point, the answer seems reassuring enough: the paper doesn’t declare wine-industry funding, and the corrected funding statement points to the Italian Ministry of Health, with no conflicts of interest declared by the authors.

So the real issue here is unlikely to be some dramatic conspiracy. It is something more ordinary.

Correlation Can Make Us Do Very Silly Things

Correlation does not equal causation. If you have ever read anything about statistics, you’ve probably heard that sentence before. It’s repeated so often that it can start to sound boring.

So let’s make it less boring.

Would you make life changes if you saw any of the below headlines?

If correlation meant causation, we’d have to make very silly changes. Ban cold drinks, blame firefighters for fire deaths, totally prohibit umbrellas, and intentionally wear bigger shoes.

The reason these correlations don’t work is that the relationship between two things can often be explained in another way. Children who are learning to read have smaller feet, so naturally those with bigger shoe sizes, i.e. adults, tend to read better. Cold drinks and drowning deaths are both driven by hot weather. Umbrellas and slipping accidents are both driven by rain. Firefighters don’t kill people - they try to save them. The more people need saving, the more firefighters arrive to help.

The same shift in perspective can be applied to the wine study.

The finding was linked to wine specifically, not alcohol intake overall. That makes it look as though there is something uniquely beneficial about wine. But can you think of reasons why someone who drinks small amounts of wine might appear healthier in a study than someone who doesn’t drink?

Why moderate wine drinkers may look healthier

So what might characterise people who drink only one glass of wine?

They sound a bit like people who say things like “just a small glass with dinner” and actually mean it. They can probably also leave half a packet of biscuits in the cupboard and forget about it. That alone makes them a suspiciously unusual group. More seriously, they may differ from other groups in all sorts of ways that the study cannot fully capture.

It may simply be that people who drink small amounts of wine differ in other important ways as well. They may be more likely to drink with meals, drink slowly, socialise differently, value rituals, or live lives that are healthier in all sorts of small ways.

And then there is the comparison group: the abstainers.

Why are they abstaining?

Again, I’m speculating here. Some may avoid alcohol because they are already unwell, because of medication, because of mental health problems, or because of religion, culture, or personal preference. Others may have reasons a study cannot easily capture.

The point is that “non-drinkers” are not necessarily a clean, healthy baseline.

For a correlational study to allow for a strong conclusion, we’d need to eliminate, or in study terms, control for, all the other important factors that might explain the difference. The study did try. It considered around 20 factors, including age, sex, diet, education, BMI, physical activity, smoking, and some health conditions. That is not nothing.

But it’s still not enough.

Because there are many things they did not, and realistically could not, fully control for: wealth, access to healthcare, reasons for abstinence, drinking history, sleep, stress, mental health, social functioning, medication, occupation, and the wider context in which people drink.

The study simply couldn’t adjust for the full context of people’s lives.

What if the “winning” group in the study - the group that may already differ in resources, habits, or social context - had chosen not to drink wine at all? Would they suddenly become less healthy purely because the wine disappeared? Or might they still have looked relatively healthy anyway?

At this point you may be fed up with my scepticism. Fair enough. Before I change the tone and try to be more optimistic, let me give you one more reason why this headline still isn’t very convincing.

The resveratrol explanation falls apart quickly

The authors suggest that wine drinkers are healthier because of compounds such as polyphenols. Wine isn’t just alcohol. It also contains plant compounds that people like to romanticise. Resveratrol is the compound getting most of the attention here.

The boring problem is dose.

A glass of red wine contains only a tiny amount of resveratrol - around 0.4 mg in 150 mL, although estimates vary. Human resveratrol studies have used doses in the tens or hundreds of milligrams per day, and even then the evidence is mixed. There is currently no conclusive clinical evidence for broad health benefits of resveratrol in humans. See this 2024 systematic review: LINK

So if red wine is healthy because of resveratrol, this is where the explanation becomes less convincing. A normal glass of wine simply does not deliver enough of it to make a meaningful health difference. What it does deliver, more meaningfully, is alcohol.

Quick maths suggests that to get into the kind of range used in human resveratrol trials, you would need somewhere between tens and hundreds of glasses of wine per day, depending on the estimate used. That is obviously not a plausible health strategy.

So where does that leave us?

Probably somewhere a bit less dramatic than the headlines.

After reading all of this, you might be less likely to believe that alcohol is good for you. That seems sensible. But does that mean you should never enjoy a glass of wine?

Not necessarily.

Wine, ritual, and why people still enjoy it

I’m not planning to make a health argument for alcohol. I don’t think alcohol is necessary for a good life. But I do think it is often tied to moments that are meaningful, social, warm, funny, and memorable.

That evening with my neighbour was a good example. We sat there drinking wine, laughing, and listening to his stories from the past. I remember quietly chuckling to myself as a few memories of him crossed my mind, especially the one of him showing me a set of air push-ups on his crutches a few weeks after knee surgery.

The wine tasted delicious. Knowing that more than 60 years of wine drinking had led him to call this bottle his favourite made it feel very special. It felt less like opening a random bottle and more like being invited into a ritual.

I left that evening regretting that I had not looked properly at the label.

It took some time, but eventually I found the name of the wine. To my surprise, it was sold in most shops, inexpensive, and easy to get. I bought a few bottles and placed them on my wine rack for a special occasion, or maybe as a gift for someone who likes wine.

A few weeks later I opened one with dinner, expecting to recreate the magic.

It tasted good.

But it was missing the surroundings, company, and ritual.

That, I think, is the point.

A glass of wine can be enjoyable because it often comes with people, rituals, memories, meals, atmosphere, and the story attached to it.

The study’s headlines are a bit misleading, but if a glass of red wine here and there is your special thing, I don’t think you need to panic either. Life is not lived by stripping away every imperfect thing. Some things are enjoyable because they sit in that human space between health, risk, ritual, pleasure, and meaning.

If abstinence is your thing, or you are perfectly happy swapping wine for a cup of tea, great. Keep going that way.

But if a glass of jammy red now and then is one of your small pleasures, that is fine too. It’s not all about optimisation. Life is also there to be enjoyed.

Just maybe do not pretend you are doing it for longevity.

Study discussed: Esposito, S. et al. (2026). Moderate wine consumption, defined by the Mediterranean Diet, is associated with delayed biological aging in men from the Moli-sani Study. International Journal of Public Health, 71. LINK

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A couple of weeks ago I took a few days off work. I wanted to let my mind and body rest, spend time with family, and enjoy local cafés and restaurants. But I also visited a dentist, got a blood test done, picked up a prescription, caught up on some reading, listened to a new audiobook, and completed a few other tasks. I also found myself spending more time on my phone - scrolling, browsing, and filling the gaps with mindless activity.

What started as a break and recovery became a surprisingly busy few days. I remember saying to one of my family members, “It was a great time, but I’m so tired. I’m back at work tomorrow, so I should be able to rest soon.” It sounds ridiculous at first - needing rest from a holiday, and looking forward to work as recovery. But I don’t think it’s that unusual.

I was recently visiting a friend who’d been having a lovely half-term with her children. But when she summed up the last few days, she said something similar: “I’m so tired, but it’s okay, I’m going back to work in a couple of days. I can’t wait for the peace and quiet.”

The more I think about this paradox, the more interesting it becomes.

Was I tired because I was too busy on my holiday, or was I simply tired of change? Is it possible that making a conscious choice to rest and avoid stimulation, is sometimes more tiring than just letting myself go? We often think of rest as the opposite of work. But in reality, what tires us out isn’t always work itself. Sometimes it’s change, decision-making, social intensity, unpredictability, or the loss of routine.

In my case, the holiday wasn’t tiring because it was negative. It was mostly filled with positive experiences and quite a lot of unfilled time. But it also involved a sudden change in routine - different activities, different people, different meal times, different sleep patterns, different decisions, different expectations. Even enjoyable change still asks something of the nervous system. It creates mental load and can affect the internal body clock. The body loses track of when to be hungry, when to be sleepy, and when to be energetic. Mind and body may simply be working much harder to keep up.

Usual daily routine is often very predictable. Even if it isn’t always filled with the most exciting activities, it can still feel safe. Work can be demanding, but it’s structured. It’s scheduled. You know where you’re meant to be and what you’re meant to be doing. There’s relief in that. Knowing what’s going to happen next gives us a sense of control.

Being in a new environment isn’t always like that. It might not create obvious anxiety or discomfort, but uncertainty is still usually more taxing than certainty. So even a good trip, a good holiday, or a good few days off can leave a person surprisingly mentally tired.

Another factor to consider is stimulation. Daily routine usually involves a certain level of stimulation depending on the person and the nature of their work. In my case, seeing clients who are struggling with mental health difficulties involves emotional engagement, attention, decision-making, and other forms of mental stimulation. Replacing that with a relaxing walk, a catch-up with a friend, or time with family may sound restful, but it doesn’t always meet the same need for structure, pace, or engagement my mind is used to.

That raises a bigger question: what is rest and what is work? What is activity and what is recovery? Are some activities only for recovery purposes and others purely productive? Or is it possible that many activities play both roles depending on the person, the circumstances, and the context?

Work can be tiring, but it can also be extremely rewarding. It can drain your energy, but it can also build it. It can exhaust you, but it can also give you structure, momentum, meaning, and a sense of direction. Similarly, taking a break can challenge you, but it can also help you recover. The same activity may feel restorative in one situation and draining in another.

The kind of activity that counts as rest probably depends partly on what’s being counted as work. A person working physically may need less physical activity in order to recover. A job requiring a lot of mental stimulation may call for quieter, more mindful activities that reduce mental load. But this is much harder to achieve than it sounds.

A person who’s used to being physically active may start feeling agitated after a few hours of resting, almost itching to do something. Choosing another physical activity might mean their muscles and joints don’t get the break they need to recover. Someone whose work is mentally stimulating may struggle to allow quiet time because boredom starts to emerge within minutes. Choosing silence or lower stimulation often takes effort. Reaching for a phone takes almost none. It gives the brain instant access to the very thing the person may need a break from. Putting it down is much harder, because the unfilled space itself feels uncomfortable.

What we call rest isn’t always especially restorative. We often “treat ourselves” with short-term relief - watching Netflix, scrolling, browsing, snacking, drinking, lying down. But are these things always restful? Sometimes yes. Sometimes no. Sometimes they help. Sometimes they leave us more tired, more scattered, or less restored than before.

And if not those things, then what? The usual healthy advice often sounds sensible enough - go for a walk, do some breathwork, spend time in the garden, read, stretch. But in many cases these healthier ways of resting can also start to feel like another task on the to-do list. Once rest becomes another thing to do properly, optimise, or get right, it can stop feeling like rest at all.

Human beings are complex. The more I learn about how we function, the more subjective these ideas seem. Each person has their own internal hierarchy of needs and goals. What feels enjoyable and peaceful for one person can feel tiring and frustrating for another. There probably isn’t a universal answer to how best to rest.

What does seem true for many of us is that the ways we often rest aren’t always ideal. At the same time, I’m not convinced there’s a clean line between the right and wrong way to do it. Sometimes short-term relief may be exactly what’s needed. Other times, the healthier option may genuinely restore us more. And sometimes the thing that feels tiring in the moment may still be the kind of rest we needed.

I don’t think I’ve found a full answer to this conundrum. But a few things do seem clear. Rest is more subjective than we often assume. It isn’t simply the absence of work. Sometimes it requires effort. Sometimes it feels uncomfortable. Sometimes it can even feel strangely tiring. But tiredness doesn’t necessarily mean the rest wasn’t restful.

Thanks for stopping by. This is the first longer piece I’ve shared here. If you’d like to read more reflections like this, you’re very welcome to subscribe below.

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