The Ben Lui group (second post): how to know when to change direction on a walk or in treatment for psychological difficulties!
16th June 2009
A couple of lines from the Bruce Springsteen song "Hungry heart" kept going through my head - "Like a river that don't know where it's flowing, I took a wrong turn and I just kept going." Something was wrong. I couldn't work out where I'd got to on my map. …
The Ben Lui group (first post): the challenge of balancing planning & savouring
15th June 2009
Tomorrow I hope to head North and West up past Stirling, Lochearnhead and Crianlarich to Strath Fillan. I should be able to park at a little village called Dalrigh just before Tyndrum. From there I can walk in by the River Cononish for about 7 km to get to Ben …
Recent research: psychologist & doctor impairment & burnout
11th June 2009
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" Juvenal The last-but-one edition of the journal Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice published several articles on psychologist stress and burnout. Interestingly the edition is currently available with full text articles downloadable for free. Smith and Moss review the psychologist impairment literature (see below for all abstracts …
Handouts & questionnaires for compassion & criticism (first post)
8th June 2009
Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible. Dalai Lama This first post on Compassion & criticism contains a series of loosely linked handouts and questionnaires about compassion, self-criticism, hostility, self-esteem and related subjects. To see a further post with additional handouts click on Compassion & criticism (second post) . …
Stanford psychophysiology lab: social anxiety, mindfulness with kids, & loving kindness
7th June 2009
Emotional reappraisal (changing the way we see a situation) and emotional suppression (inhibiting our already present emotional response) have very different effects on our feelings, relationships and wellbeing. As a generalisation, reappraisal tends to work well, while suppression comes at higher cost. I wrote about this last month in a …
Recent research: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition on weight, sugared drinks, vitamin D, vegetarianism & climate change
4th June 2009
I like the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (AJCN). It comes out monthly and nearly always has an article or two that I find interesting and helpful. The AJCN May edition produced a bumper crop. Interesting articles included a report by Chen and colleagues (see below for all abstracts) on …
Reappraising reappraisal
31st May 2009
The research I reported on earlier this month, in blog posts about Oregon University and Stanford University psychology labs, really got me thinking. "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose." Over the last several years, I've moved further and further away from traditional cognitive therapy techniques like cognitive restructuring …
Recent research: six papers relevant to psychotherapy
28th May 2009
Here are six studies relevant to improving psychotherapy outcomes. Brewin et al report on using imagery-based interventions to help people with depressioin. Lydiard et al highlight the importance of sleep-related disturbances as a treatment target in PTSD. McCrady and colleagues show that working with couples rather than just individuals seems …
Stanford psychophysiology lab research on emotion regulation
24th May 2009
Last week I talked about coming across Srivastava and colleagues' paper (Srivastava, Tamir et al. 2009 - see below) on the social costs of emotional suppression. This led me to Srivastava's lab at the University of Oregon. It's then an easy jump to James Gross's Psychophysiology lab at Stanford University …
Recent research: six papers on helping children & adolescents
21st May 2009
Here are half a dozen papers on helping kids and adolescents. The Fuligni et al paper found that adolescents experiencing frequent interpersonal stresses tended to have increased levels of C-reactive protein, " ... an inflammatory marker that is a key indicator of cardiovascular risk ... ". Jackson et al showed …