A tricky aspect of the way we’re built is that many of our real concerns don’t break through into our conscious minds – because of the somewhat surprising, shocking, poignant or vulnerable nature of our true selves. We prefer not to know much about what we genuinely think – but we buy our peace of mind at a high cost, with an increase in background anxiety, sadness and irritability.

In order to learn more about our true selves, it pays to lean on one of the great exercises of modern psychology: what is known as a Sentence Completion test. The test involves taking a whole lot of unfinished sentences and completing them as fast as possible, without censoring whatever first comes into one’s mind – in order that one discover a range of things about what one deep down really feels, fears, wants, regrets or are cross about.