"In the Dzogchen teachings there’s an analogy to ringing a bell (to instantly see the illusory nature of the self).  You briefly ring it and then the continuity of the sound evolves for as long as it will.  And then you ring it again. "


Posts tagged with 'psychotherapy'

Do psychotherapists, doctors and leaders develop "emotional chainmail"? Two kinds of empathy.

27th February 2013

I wrote yesterday about how, at the weekend, I was involved in an hour and a half's deep emotional conflict resolution with an old friend that was witnessed in a group by another eight people. As pretty much always, in the feedback that emerged over the next twenty four hours, …

Do psychotherapists, doctors and leaders develop "emotional chainmail"? Description of a possible problem.

26th February 2013

I've been in a peer "psychotherapy group" residential retreat again recently and I was involved in an interaction that has crystalised a series of thoughts about potential "emotional armouring" in therapists that I've been aware of more vaguely for some time. And in fact these "suspicions" involve not just psychotherapists, …

Major new research shows how psychotherapy can help those struggling with antidepressant-resistant depression: more detail

9th February 2013

I wrote an initial post yesterday on the very interesting recent Lancet paper "Cognitive behavioural therapy as an adjunct to pharmacotherapy for primary care based patients with treatment resistant depression: Results of the CoBalT randomised controlled trial". In today's post I want to give a little more context to this …

Major new research shows how psychotherapy can help those struggling with antidepressant-resistant depression: overview

8th February 2013

Major new research published in the Lancet last week gives hope to those struggling with antidepressant-resistant depression. Nicola Wiles and 15 co-authors have just reported on this two year study involving 469 patients with treatment-resistant depression seen in 73 UK general practices. The abstract of their paper "Cognitive behavioural therapy …

New research suggests CBT depression treatment is more effective if we focus on strengths rather than weaknesses (3rd post)

11th January 2013

I do enjoy writing these blog posts ... real fun having the opportunity to think around subjects that currently intrigue me. So in the first post in this sequence on the value of a therapeutic focus on strengths rather than weaknesses we looked fairly broadly at this area. In the …

New research suggests CBT depression treatment is more effective if we focus on strengths rather than weaknesses (2nd post)

9th January 2013

I wrote an initial post on "New research suggests ... focus on strengths rather than weaknesses" a couple of days ago. I discussed various reasons for thinking that better matching of patients to more personalized treatments could be helpful (although difficult) and looked as well at several research studies that …

New research suggests CBT depression treatment is more effective if we focus on strengths rather than weaknesses (1st post)

7th January 2013

In 2010 Simon & Perlis highlighted the importance of being better able to match depression sufferers to treatment approaches that were more likely to benefit them. In their paper "Personalized medicine for depression: Can we match patients with treatments?", they wrote: "Response to specific depression treatments varies widely among individuals. …

Our minds work associatively: this is of central importance for psychotherapy and for life in general

24th December 2012

(this post is downloadable both as a PDF file and as a Word doc) In his brilliant book "Thinking, fast and slow" published last year, the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman says his aim is to help improve our "ability to identify and understand errors of judgement and choice ... …

Compulsory multi-source feedback is coming or has already come to the health professions & to many other jobs as well

17th October 2012

"O wad some Power the giftie gie us to see oursels as ithers see us! It wad frae mony a blunder free us, an' foolish notion." Rabbie Burns "He who knows others is learned; he who knows himself is wise." Lao-tzu Compulsory revalidation begins for British medical doctors on the …

Five recent research studies on the worrying variability both in psychotherapist effectiveness and also in willingness to change

15th October 2012

I have written a good deal in the past about variability in the effectiveness of psychotherapists - see, for example, "What shall we do about the fact that there are supershrinks and pseudoshrinks?", "Psychotherapists & counsellors who don't monitor their outcomes are at risk of being both incompetent & potentially …