"Those who do not have the power over the story that dominates their lives - the power to retell it, reexperience it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change - truly are powerless because they cannot think new thoughts. "


Posts tagged with 'empathy'

Meeting at relational depth: what does it involve?

24th October 2010

"A consultation is when the room disappears." David Reilly (physician) On Saturday I went to a course called "Meeting at relational depth: a research workshop". I have already written a first post outlining the day. After staying overnight in Glasgow with a friend who was also coming to the course, …

Meeting at relational depth: outline of a 'research' workshop

23rd October 2010

I'm booked in for a course today with Professor Mick Cooper of the University of Strathclyde entitled "Meeting at relational depth: a research workshop". The publicity blurb reads "This experiential workshop, which Mick Cooper has been running nationally and internationally since the publication of 'Working at relational depth in counselling …

Opening up group, fifth session

27th September 2010

I wrote just a few days ago about the fourth session of this "Opening up" group. This fifth session was a full day meeting. Good to have a whole day together. A bigger pool to swim in, more time to explore. Nice too to share food together - we all …

Recent research: articles from April journals

13th May 2010

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 over 14,300 abstracts. Every few weeks I scan through all the articles I've found interesting in the previous month (in the general areas …

Interpersonal group work 2

22nd February 2010

See the earlier blog post "Interpersonal group work 1" for comments and handouts particularly orientated to pre-group assessment. It's usually time very well spent, orientating would-be participants to what interpersonal process groups are likely to involve. This both speeds up the time it takes new group members to start engaging …

Interpersonal group work 1

15th February 2010

Here are a set of handouts and questionnaires that I often use when I'm running interpersonal process groups. As the "Group therapy background information" leaflet (see below) comments: "Group therapy simply means that therapeutic work is done in groups rather than one-to-one. Many different types of therapy have been tried …

Training in group facilitation

1st November 2009

I'm facilitating a group today on "Relationships & emotional intelligence". When explaining why someone might want to come to the group, the initial publicity leaflet reads "It's worth taking the time to look at our relationships because they are such a huge part of our lives. Past relationships deeply affect …

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 …

Recent research: NICE guidance on social and emotional wellbeing in secondary education

1st October 2009

NICE is the UK National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence - "the independent organisation responsible for providing national guidance on the promotion of good health and the prevention and treatment of ill health." Although their guidance applies particularly to England and Wales, the opinions they come up with are …

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 …