"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. "


Posts tagged with 'reappraisal'

A startlingly effective way to reduce interpersonal conflict and distress - discussion & broader applications

19th September 2013

(this post is downloadable both as a PDF file and as a Word doc) Yesterday I wrote a blog post on the very interesting & encouraging recent research paper "A brief intervention to promote conflict reappraisal preserves marital quality over time" which introduces a simple reappraisal method with great promise …

A startlingly effective way to reduce interpersonal conflict and distress - the intervention & results described

18th September 2013

(this post is downloadable both as a PDF file and as a Word doc) The recent research paper "A brief intervention to promote conflict reappraisal preserves marital quality over time" describes a startlingly effective way to reduce interpersonal conflict and distress. The results are clearly extremely relevant for anyone in …

An intriguing and encouraging development in therapeutic writing

14th December 2011

(This blog post is available both as a PDF file and as a Word doc - you may need to 'save' the latter before you can open it) "You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness." Jonathan Safran Foer "No man was ever wise by chance." Lucius …

Andrew Christensen's "Unified protocol for couple therapy" - the five principles (one, two & three)

19th August 2011

I wrote yesterday about Andrew Christensen's interesting proposal for a "Unified protocol for couple therapy". I mentioned that the protocol involves "five principles". The first of these is to: (1) provide a contextualized, dyadic, objective conceptualization of problems. Good. This makes plenty of sense. It's seeing the "wood" rather than …

Andrew Christensen's "Unified protocol for couple therapy" - overview

18th August 2011

Couple therapy was a major theme in last month's British Association for Behavioural & Cognitive Psychotherapies conference and I wrote three blog posts about this. One of several initiatives I followed up after the conference was to get a copy of the book "Enhancing couples: The shape of couple therapy …

BABCP spring meeting: David Barlow's unified protocol - emotional awareness training & cognitive reappraisal (fourth post)

18th April 2011

I have already written three posts about the David Barlow workshop at this year's Spring BABCP conference. The most recent was "Motivation enhancement & treatment rationale" - the first two modules of the new eight module transdiagnostic "Unified protocol" intervention for emotional disorders (including anxiety & depression). Today's post is …

Recent research: six studies on emotional & relationship ‘intelligence’ – placebo, warmth, mindfulness, & emotions

22nd October 2009

Here are half a dozen research papers that have recently interested me in the broad areas of emotional and relationship "intelligence" (all details & abstracts to these studies are given further down this blog posting). Kelley et al report on "Patient and practitioner influences on the placebo effect" which in …

Therapeutic use of film, music & poetry

25th September 2009

A few days ago a client lent me a DVD of the film Groundhog Day. It's a whimsical comedy about a guy who finds himself in a weird time loop where he has to repeat the same day again, and again, and again. Luckily for him, he isn't condemned to …

Recent research: six articles on wellbeing – meaning in life, reappraisal, positive emotions, and neighbourliness

23rd July 2009

Here are six research articles (see below for abstracts and links) loosely falling into the overall area of wellbeing. Boyle, Barnes et al report on the association between purpose in life and mortality in older people. They found that greater purpose in life was associated with considerably reduced mortality even …

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 …