"Unfinished business": emotion-focused therapy and "empty chair work"
24th April 2013
"My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing." Aldous Huxley I'm a member of a therapists' Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) support group. We have been meeting every month or two for a while to talk about and practise using EFT methods. I wrote about this last …
A day spent "idle & blessed": revisiting an experiment - savouring & "positive state mindfulness"
20th April 2013
Last September I went back to Cambridge for a reunion ... the first time I'd ever been back to school or university for such a thing. It was an experiment in "emotional archaeology" and I wrote a series of blog posts about it. At one stage I experimented with a …
A good way of assessing attachment style across a variety of close relationships: the ECR-RS questionnaire
18th April 2013
This is an extension of yesterday's blog post "Attachment style in both health professionals & their clients, therapeutic alliance & mindfulness". Nearly four years ago I wrote a blog post "Assessing attachment in adults" where I discussed this field and gave more details of the 36-item "Experiences in close relationships …
Attachment style in both health professionals & their clients, therapeutic alliance & mindfulness
17th April 2013
I had lunch with a health professional friend the other day. Later he emailed me saying "The last few times we have met you have mentioned the importance of attachment style in determining aspects of the interaction between patients and health care professionals." He went on to raise a series …
BABCP spring meeting: workshop and conference - an introduction (1st post)
6th April 2013
I have just been in Belfast for the BABCP Spring workshops & conference. My mind is still buzzing from all the input. It was exciting. I went to Arnoud Arntz's workshop on Schema-Focused Therapy. I have been to several training days with Arnoud before, but it was helpful getting an …
Recent research: articles from March journals
3rd April 2013
I read a lot of research. When I find an article of particular interest I download it to my bibliographic database - EndNote - which currently contains nearly 19,500 abstracts. Every few weeks I scan through all the articles I've found interesting in the previous month (in the general areas …
Twelve recent research studies on diet, psychological symptoms & wellbeing (2nd post): magnesium, zinc, folate, fish & selenium
24th March 2013
I wrote a post a couple of days ago entitled "Twelve recent research studies on diet, psychological symptoms & wellbeing (1st post): overall dietary quality & depression". I said that glancing back over recent research studies that I have noticed & downloaded to my personal database, I was struck by …
Twelve recent research studies on diet, psychological symptoms & wellbeing (1st post): overall dietary quality & depression
22nd March 2013
Glancing back over recent research studies that I have noticed & downloaded to my personal database, I was struck by a whole series on the effects of diet on psychological state. I've listed twelve that caught my eye in the last several months - this first of two posts details …
Therapeutic cross-breeding: EFT's approach to self-interruption splits applied to outdated coping modes in schema therapy
20th March 2013
"The walls we build to protect ourselves become the prisons in which we live" Alice Miller (adapted) Here's a blog post for "the anoraks"! I mean that this post is mostly going to interest a rather limited group of psychotherapists but, hey, here goes. This evening I'm due to go …
Keeping up with relevant research
18th March 2013
I average a little over three hours weekly scanning medical and psychological journals on the internet. Typically I zoom through the article titles looking for anything relevant to stress, health & wellbeing. If something seems interesting, I read the article's abstract. I may well then download it to my bibliographic …