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 …
Handouts & questionnaires for depression, CBASP & neuroscience
18th May 2009
Here is a mixed bag of handouts and questionnaires. Most are spin-offs from CBASP (pronounced 'seebasp') - the awkwardly named cognitive behavioral analysis system of psychotherapy. There are also a few handouts which are adapted downloads from the neurosciences site "The brain from top to bottom". When in 2000, Keller …
Oregon University research on emotional regulation, interpersonal perception & personality
17th May 2009
I love it when I follow up ideas from a new research paper and then break through into a whole area of helpful knowledge that I haven't come across before. This happened recently with the paper by Srivastava and colleagues (Srivastava, Tamir et al. 2009 - see below) on the …
The broadening, evidence-based relevance of emotional processing
13th May 2009
"There's nothing so practical as a good theory". Kurt Lewin I wrote yesterday about the "triangle of emotions". I am a medical doctor and accredited cognitive behavioural psychotherapist. I was drawn to CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) because I wanted to help people as effectively as possible. When I started to …
Peer groups: Cumbria spring group reflection - "the triangle of emotions"
12th May 2009
Like many cognitively-orientated therapists who have observed the power of charged emotional work, I've struggled to integrate these approaches in ways that are evidence-based and intellectually rigorous. As they used to say in the early groups I was involved with in the 1970's - "Lose your head and come to …
Peer groups: Cumbria spring group – cathartic work from the outside
11th May 2009
So I wrote yesterday about the cathartic, emotion-focussed work that I went through. In their classic 1973 book "Encounter groups: first facts" the authors, Lieberman, Yalom and Miles, describe their major research on the potential benefits of these kinds of groups. One of their findings was that people who benefited …
Peer groups: Cumbria spring group – cathartic work from the inside
10th May 2009
I wrote yesterday about a horrid feeling of my heart "drying out" and closing. Although it seemed hard to do without possibly upsetting other people badly, I was very clear that I would share what was going on in me. These kinds of groups need honesty to flourish - otherwise …