Sofie Hagen loves sex – so why has it been 3,089 days since she’s had any? (1m27s); A flat white can now set you back up to £5.19 – but should we swallow it? (25m13s); and psychotherapist and Observer columnist Philippa Perry addresses a reader’s personal problem (43m51s).

We can get into the habit of thinking about our sibling with judgment and criticism

The question Since our mother’s death, my brother and I have had no contact . He lives more than 100 miles away. Our relationship has been very difficult for over 40 years. When we both had young children, things were better for a time. When our dad died, Mum’s health deteriorated and she moved in with me and died 12 years later. During this time, my relationship with my brother was at its worst. Before retirement, we both worked in mental health, but neither of us understand why our family relationship has been so fractured.

There is a family history: our grandfather did not get on with his sister, he and his wife kept secrets, and our dad fell out with his twin! Our childhood was difficult as our father had mental health issues.

Scientific studies cannot agree on the relative importance of genes and environment on how we turn out as adults

The eternal mystery of how much we are shaped by our parents – or how much we shape our children – was stirred again last week with the publication of a study that suggests that we are less like our parents than we had previously thought.

Led by René Mõttus of Edinburgh University’s department of psychology, the study looked at more than 1,000 pairs of relatives to establish how likely children are to inherit what psychologists call the “big five” or “Ocean” personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.

Staying close to friends isn’t always easy. From calling out flakiness to singing together in a choir, experts share their advice on how to keep the spark alive

There is no getting around it, you have to make time to be a good friend. According to Robin Dunbar, professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Oxford and author of Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationships , we need to spend the equivalent of nine minutes a day to maintain a healthy relationship with our closest network of friends, which he admits is “barely time to raise your coffee cup to each other”, so one meet-up a week is more realistic. If you fail to do that, “the friendship starts to decay”, says Dunbar.

New research reveals that listing your grievances on a piece of paper, then throwing them away may make you less angry. So I gave it a try …

A lifetime enveloped in a benign, insulating cloud of oestrogen left me ill-prepared to be this nakedly, shockingly angry as it ebbs away in perimenopause. It is occasionally exhilarating, but mainly awful, being furious about so many things: the government, contradictory dental advice, inaction on climate breakdown, whatever cat keeps defecating at my back door. I exist at an exhausting, irrational rolling simmer that periodically comes to a head with me inappropriately venting, realising I’m being unreasonable, shamefacedly having a word with myself, then getting cross again.

Help may be at hand, however, according to research from Japan , which suggests that writing your grievances on paper then throwing it away may make you less angry. Study participants were deliberately angered by researchers criticising their work and adding gratuitous insulting comments. Participants then wrote down how they felt and either threw the paper away, shredded it or kept it. The ones who disposed of the paper “completely eliminated their anger”.

It’s the internal voice whose strict, unbending standards can make us miserable. But tuning in to it can change everything

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When I first became her patient, I heard everything my therapist said as a criticism. Almost every word that came out of her mouth, I received as a telling off, a character assassination or a low mark. I thought to myself: “I’m paying this woman to help me and all she’s doing is criticising me! How rude!”

Here’s a made-up example that has a lot of truth in it: if I lost my mobile phone and described my feelings of panic, she might respond with something along the lines of: “You crazy woman, can you not be more robust? How can you be overwhelmed by something like losing your phone? Can you not be more chill? More resilient? Thank God my other patients are not this basic.”

Manage your mum’s care from a distance. Don’t get sucked into her orbit

The question My father was violent and my mother emotionally fragile. I took on a parental role from the age of around 11, trying to manage my dad’s moods, keep my mum’s spirits up and take care of my younger brother. Mum often lean ed on me and I felt responsible for her stability. We were often punished in cruel ways. I was also abused sexually by a family “friend”. When we finally escaped our father, Mum moved this friend into our first “safe” home as her partner, where he continued to abuse me. As adults, my brother and I maintain strict boundaries and there is judgment from the wider family for this.

With a lot of therapy I have managed to forge a life for myself, which can still feel as though it shouldn’t belong to me, with a loving partner and warm friends. I have worked in a professional role for 15 years. Yet I struggle to feel confident and competent. I often fear losing the life I’ve built. I maintain contact with Mum, because I don’t want to hurt her and I know she doesn’t recognise how things were, but I don’t feel the “normal” feelings people feel towards their parents.

Marina Hyde with her take on Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s surreal US presidential bid (1m23s); Emine Saner meets the sociopath who learned to behave – and found happiness (8m05s); why Gen Z has fallen in love with Sex and the City (24m45s); and do our political opponents really hate us? (29m54s).

Readers respond to Japanese research on anger management techniques

Your article ( Write down your thoughts and shred them to relieve anger, researchers say, 9 April ) reminded me that, in the 1960s, after visiting a preschool group in a monitoring capacity, I felt aggrieved by the way I’d been received. On returning home, I wrote a letter to the person involved, but then calmed down sufficiently to decide not to send it. I screwed up the paper and threw it on to the open fire. I did feel better after that.

Fast forward to the early 2000s, while working with a bereavement organisation, my client expressed negative thoughts about a close relative who was reacting in a different way to their loss. I suggested he write down his angry thoughts and then destroy what he wrote in whatever way he wanted.