Posts tagged with 'writing'
Goal renewal boosts wellbeing: second post
23rd August 2009
I wrote a week ago about assessing one's wellbeing level. It makes sense to do this before exploring how much the following goal renewal suggestions boost your sense of wellbeing and associated life satisfaction. How might we renew our goals? Obviously there are many options here. One effective one is …
Writing - positive pasts & best futures
9th August 2009
If you would like a printable handout of this blog post click here. There is lots of research - approaching two hundred studies - on the physical and mental benefits of writing about emotional upheavals in our lives. Professor Jamie Pennebaker gives further details of this approach on his excellent …
Recent research: a mixed bag of six papers on anxiety
19th February 2009
Here are half a dozen papers with anxiety relevance. The first couple are about the interaction between genetic vulnerability (or resilience) and childhood experience. The Stevens et al paper is an update on the large body of research looking at psychological genetic vulnerability/resilience in macaque monkeys and how this interacts …
Friendship, life planning, & expressing emotions
11th January 2009
Yesterday and today are a check-in time with my friend Larry. I've written in a previous blog post how Larry and I have met every three or four months for many years specifically to review how our lives are going and to plan and prioritize our goals for the next …
Recent research: egosystem & ecosystem
13th November 2008
In the end the love you take is equal to the love you make. Beatles This is essentially the Beatles closing statement. It is the last lyric on the last album they recorded. (Let It Be was the last album they released, but it was recorded earlier). Every now and …
Handouts & questionnaires for summary, reflection, screening, progress charts, empathy & confidence, and more
6th October 2008
Here are a series of forms that I use almost every session with clients, or for screening and orientation at the start of therapy: Summary sheet - at the end of virtually every session with a client I move my chair round to sit beside them and, using a clipboard …
Handouts & questionnaires for life review, traumatic memories & therapeutic writing
29th September 2008
I've been working on the 'Life review, traumatic memories & therapeutic writing' handouts list in the Good Knowledge section of this website. I detail them below: Chart, early years (0 to 13) - this is the first of six charts that I sometimes use to get an outline of the …
Draft SIGN non-pharmacological depression treatments guideline, 9th post: self help, guided, and complementary therapies
27th September 2008
The fourth and final session of the "Non-pharmacological management of depression" SIGN seminar was entitled "Self help, guided and alternative/complementary therapies". Dr George Deans, Consultant Clinical Psychologist at Aberdeen's Royal Cornhill Hospital, gave the first presentation of this session on "Alternative/complementary therapies 2". I've already discussed the lack of good …
Checking in with Larry - next morning
6th July 2008
This is a continuation of yesterday's blog about regular check-ins/life planning with my great friend Larry. And now it's Sunday morning around 7.00am. Yesterday we went out to the 'hut' at Carbeth knowing that there was a good chance that the owner, Gerry, might in fact be using it himself. …
Recent research: OCD, writing & rumination, trauma & eating disorder, internet depression treatment, and sleep & PTSD
3rd July 2008
Simpson, H. B., E. B. Foa, et al. (2008). "A Randomized, Controlled Trial of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Augmenting Pharmacotherapy in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder." Am J Psychiatry 165(5): 621-630. [Abstract/Full Text] Most OCD sufferers treated adequately with antidepressants will continue to have clinically significant symptoms. This study shows that adding exposure and …